Everyone knows the recommendation for healthy teeth – brush twice every day and don’t eat an excessive amount of sugar. So why do those of us following these instructions find we sometimes need a filling once we visit the dentist? The reality is, there’s a bit more to stopping tooth decay than these guidelines suggest. Here’s what it is advisable know.

Brush up in your skills

The way you brush makes a giant difference. The mechanical act of brushing removes the very sticky dental plaque – a combination of bacteria, their acids and sticky byproducts and food remnants. It forms naturally on teeth immediately after you’ve eaten but doesn’t get nasty and begin to cause damage to the teeth until it reaches a certain stage of maturity. The precise period of time this takes isn’t known but is a minimum of greater than 12 hours.

Bacteria devour sugar and, as a byproduct, produce acids which dissolve mineral out of the teeth, leaving microscopic holes we will’t see. If the method isn’t stopped and so they aren’t repaired, these can develop into big, visible cavities.

Cavities emerge when tooth decay is untreated, and so they often require a filling.
Sergii Kuchugurnyi/Shutterstock

Taking two minutes to brush your teeth is goal for removing plaque and it’s best to brush at night and one other time every day. Brushing incessantly stops the bacteria developing to a stage where the species which produce probably the most acid can develop into established.

Electric toothbrushes will be more practical than manual brushing and a small toothbrush head helps to succeed in awkward areas within the mouth, while medium-textured bristles assist you to clean effectively without causing harm to gums and teeth. The predominant thing, nonetheless, is to get brushing!

Use fluoride toothpaste and disclosing tablets

A lot of the profit from brushing comes from toothpaste. The important thing ingredient is fluoride, which evidence shows prevents tooth decay. Fluoride replaces lost minerals in teeth and likewise makes them stronger.

For max profit, use toothpaste with 1350-1500 ppmF – that’s concentration of fluoride in parts per million – to stop tooth decay.

Check your toothpaste’s concentration by reading the ingredients on the back of the tube. Not all children’s toothpastes are strong enough for them to achieve maximum profit. Your dentist may prescribe higher strength fluoride toothpaste based on their assessment of your or your child’s risk of tooth decay.

Plaque is difficult to see since it is whitish, like your teeth. Disclosing tablets can be found in supermarkets and chemists and so they make plaque more visible, showing areas you might have missed when brushing.

Invisible plaque is revealed in vibrant pink after using a disclosing tablet.
Weakiva/Shutterstock

Spit, don’t rinse

At night, you produce less saliva than throughout the day. For this reason, your teeth have less protection from saliva and are more vulnerable to acid attacks. That’s why it’s essential to remove food out of your teeth before bed so plaque bacteria can’t feast overnight. Don’t eat or drink anything except water after brushing at night. This also gives fluoride the longest opportunity to work.

When you’ve brushed, don’t rinse your mouth with water or mouthwash – you’re washing away the fluoride! This is usually a difficult habit to interrupt, but can reduce tooth decay by as much as 25%.

Not more than 4 ‘sugar hits’

Intrinsic sugars are found naturally in foods like fruit and so they are far less more likely to cause tooth decay than added or free sugars. Free sugars are generally those added to foods by manufacturers but additionally include honey, syrup and fruit juices.

These are all easy for bacteria to devour, metabolise and produce acids from. Nevertheless, it will possibly be difficult to inform that are the worst sugars for teeth. For instance, although normal amounts of fruit are advantageous, fruit juices have sugar liberated from the plant cells and heavy consumption could cause decay.

The World Health Organization and NHS recommend free sugars should ideally make up lower than 5% of your every day calorie intake. So what does this appear like? For adults and youngsters over about 11 years old, that is around 30g – about eight teaspoons – of sugar every day.

A 330ml can of Coke has 35g of sugar. The change4life app is useful to trace how much sugar you devour in your food plan.

Having a hot drink without sugar is a technique of cutting out an everyday sugar hit.
Eviart/Shutterstock

Although not as essential as how much, how often you eat sugar also matters. Easy carbohydrates like sugar are easier for bacteria to digest than proteins or complex carbohydrates. Bacteria produce acids after they metabolise sugar which causes demineralisation.

Fortunately, through the actions of fluoride toothpaste and the remineralising effects of saliva, your teeth can get well from the early stages of those attacks. It’s like having a set of scales – attempting to keep the balance between sugars on one side, fluoride toothpaste and cleansing on the opposite.

Read more:
Kid’s toothpaste: the facts

Typically, your teeth will be exposed to 4 “sugar hits” – episodes of sugar intake – every day without irreversible damage to the teeth. Why not try counting what number of sugary hits you’ve gotten a day? This includes biscuits, cups of sugary tea or coffee and other snacks with refined carbohydrates like crisps. A straightforward way of cutting down could be to stop putting sugar in hot drinks and limiting snacking.

Brush twice every day with fluoride toothpaste, spit don’t rinse, eat and drink nothing after brushing, and don’t have sugar greater than 4 times every day. Easy!