You visit the best family dental Richmond practitioner regularly, you brush your teeth twice a day, you floss religiously to get rid of every food particle stuck in the nooks and crannies of your teeth and you rinse your mouth with the mouth-wash your dentist has prescribed. You might think that you are all set regarding your dental care and oral hygiene, but that may not be the case. We don’t want to alarm you but there are certain habits that many of us are guilty of and they may be putting our teeth at risk. Your pearly whites that you love so much and which you would like to maintain for the remainder of your life are at a greater risk than you thought because of the following habits that you might not even realize you are making.
1) Biting Your Nails
Nail biting is a para-functional habit that can wear down teeth rapidly.
2) Brushing Too Much and Too Forcefully
Even if you do have the right brush, you can still damage your teeth by brushing too forcefully. All you need is a gentle technique to brush twice a day, and you will be good to go. No need to have a workout while you are brushing your teeth!
3) Chewing On Ice Cubes and Other Frozen Treats
When you force your jaws and teeth to chew ice cubes, a task that the blenders with only the sharpest blades can do, you risk your teeth to endure a traumatizing experience that can damage them.
4) Teeth Grinding and Clenching
The family dental Richmond practitioners define ‘Bruxing’ as an act of jaw clenching and teeth grinding, and they all believe it to cause fractures, tooth wear, and looseness as well as jaw pain.
5) Not Using the Right Toothbrush
When you use a toothbrush that has hard bristles or you use forceful repetitive motions to brush your teeth, you can cause abrasions and recessions in your gums and teeth.
6) Using Your Teeth for Unintended Purposes
Teeth are designed to break down food and not for tearing tags off clothes, ripping a bag of chips, or for unscrewing the bottle caps. Don’t use them as tools as that can cause tooth cracks, chips, and fractures.
7) Playing Intensive Sports without Mouth Protection
Playing contact sports that have a high chance of physical contact without any mouth protection and a mouthguard can cause tooth chipping, breaking, or even tooth loss, as well as gum fractures that can be compromising for your oral health.
8) Dry Mouth Syndrome
Saliva is essential for maintaining oral health. If you suffer from dry mouth syndrome, you won’t have the additional help from saliva to neutralize the acidity in your mouth and to provide minerals that strengthen your tooth enamel.
9) Sugary Foods and Drinks
We might sound like a broken record for saying this, but the truth is hard. Foods and drinks that are high in sugar as well as complex carbohydrates (like white bread) that disintegrate into sugar can be the major cause of oral bacteria that produce digestive acids that can cause cavities.
10) An Unbreakable Coffee or Soda Drinking Habit
Coffee and soda might not seem like much to you, but they can cause teeth discoloration as they tend to erode the teeth enamel that works so hard to protect your teeth against decay and other corrosion-causing elements. If you sip a cup of coffee or sodas all day long, you are constantly flooding your teeth with fluids high in the acidity wheel your saliva has no chance to neutralize it.