Life is busy for many Fort Worth residents. At times, it’s impossible to get all the “gotta do’s” done and many are put off or dropped altogether. Sometimes your car has to wait another 500 miles for an oil change or you are a month late replacing your furnace filter or you realize that you’ve had a leaky faucet since the Clinton administration. Many important things get put on the back burner, but we beg you not to neglect vital dental care.
Here are some common dental care shortcuts. Are you guilty of any of them?
Your teeth deserve a conscientious two minutes or more. Slow and methodical beats quick and dirty. Use a process to make sure you get every tooth. Playing one of your favorite two- or three-minute songs may help you go the distance.
We hope none of our patients put off evaluations and cleanings. When you feel tooth pain, it may be way too late to prevent a filling or even a root canal.
When softer plaque turns to calculus, you can’t brush it off with a toothbrush. Six-month cleanings help get rid of the calculus or tartar before it can impair your enamel or irritate your gums.
While it’s better to floss with a floss pick than to not floss at all, it’s important to know that floss picks can only clean a part of the tooth’s surface. A floss pick holds just a small length of floss stretched in a straight line. Looking down, a tooth is shaped somewhat round or oval. A straight piece of floss just doesn’t make sense geometrically because it doesn’t conform to the outline of the tooth as well as traditional floss. When you wrap a string of floss completely around the circumference of a tooth, you can more thoroughly clean that high-priority area around and just below the gumline. We have seen patients who are dutiful floss pick users who developed decay in a tiny crack the floss pick skipped over day after day.
At The Parkway Dentist, we urge our patients to practice preventative dentistry to protect their smiles for life. We offer the full spectrum of general and cosmetic dental procedures including sedation dentistry, orthodontics, cosmetic dentistry, and dental implants. For more information, call The Parkway Dentist today at 817-735-1616 or visit https://www.theparkwaydentist.com/blog/.