Easter is around the corner and a lot of family gatherings are happing.  Yes, even in 2021.    What we eat and drink is something that most people don’t think about much during the holiday season or just random holidays.  All of the extra family and friends and work gatherings mean many holiday beverages are going to be consumed.  This all comes down to have an effect on your overall health.  One area that it can affect a lot is your dental health and the drinks you consume can have not only effects on how you look but how long your teeth are actually going to last. Rather it is Easter or winter, I want to jump into some things that we should all be thinking about for our dental health.

Now at all times during the year my morning coffee is present. This is an area that many people like to splurge on in the winter and they think that because it is cold or the holiday season that lots of sugary drinks and coffee are a great idea in the morning.  Well, I would agree that a nice Starbucks coffee that is filled with some kind of latte is amazing, it may not be so good for my dental health.  I am not against drinking the occasional holiday beverage, but if you end up getting one every morning and then drinking 2 cups of coffee at work every day you may be in for a really bad dental bill coming. 

The more acid buildup you get the more your teeth break down. This is a very bad thing and it can cause your teeth to yellow or even turn brown very quickly.  So cutting back on some of those extra drinks or maybe even substituting them for some nice tea can be a good way to protect your teeth.  It may also save a ton of money from not having to visit the dentist so much or have any major surgeries for your teeth.

At all times drinks and your diet are a big part of your dental health.  Even during easter, people love lemonade.  The sugar and acid that is in these beverages are insanely high.  In fact, the amount of sugar in simply soda can be more than you should consume in a few days and many people drink  3 to 20 times that amount each day.  This means that your teeth are constantly being attacked and the tooth enamel is going to decay at a much faster rate.  That can lead to cavities and a lot of dental expenses over the long haul.  So think about cutting back or limiting these soda beverages not only for the holidays but in general.  It is pretty obvious they are not good for your health and especially your teeth.

ALl of the Lecroy and Buble drinks are also not healthy either. They may have no sugar, at all, but they are surprisingly high in acid.  That means that they are still eating away at your teeth even though you think you are drinking a healthy beverage. Just be careful and cutback on those as well.  Water is really the best bet so try to drink more of it and get a nice bottle.  That always helps me cutback and that is to replace it with something healthy.

Now that the year has come to an end it is time to think about what is most important in life.  Many people use the New Year as a stepping stone to reflect back on what has happened and in 2021 this is certainly a time to do so.  We saw civil unrest, a pandemic, and a vast majority of people losing jobs for all of these things.  But what we also saw was that family and friends still found time to be together at the end of the year and that in some instances that actually was fantastic but still had poor effects on our own health.  What am I really trying to get at here you might ask? Well, the fact is that our teeth are very vulnerable during this time of year and that is simply because we are putting our teeth through the things that hurt them the most.  So I wanted to talk about the holidays and also go over some ways to overcome the problems and protect those pearly white teeth. 

So what can we do in the times of the Holidays and directly after in order to think about protection?  Well, see the thing is I can give all the advice in the world but you may be in a specific situation that needs attention.  The fact is that most of us are all different in just about every way.  This means that we all have individual needs and probably should have a specific professional diagnosis of our current status.  You know what I am getting at.  The fact is we all need to see a dentist to see where we are at, and that especially goes if you have not seen one in six months.  The vast majority of Americans see a dentist only when needed and can go 5 to 10 years without seeing one.  That is a long time and can have some pretty bad impacts on your health.  

So, what you need to do is sit down and pull out your internet-connected device and find a great dentist.  If you have insurance then find one under your plan that is close and get the best-rated one for you and or your family. This may be a big difference because some dentists that are great with adults are not good with children and part of that is their staff as well.  So make sure you are going to a dentist that is well rated for what you need because part of the experience matters.  Now that you have found one it’s time to schedule up a time.

With technology these days and the sales systems in place by dentists and yes they certainly have them it is pretty easy to set up an appointment.  Most can be done online with automated scheduling.  But be warned if you put your phone number in you will probably get a call and multiple texts about your appointment.  For the most part, I think this is actually good, but the issue is if you no longer want to go you will probably be hounded by their staff.  So, only set up an appointment if you really mean it or it will feel like you are being spammed.  Now go get the best plan for your teeth and be safe!

With the whole pandemic happening we saw people starting to stop going to hospitals.  The fact is that now you are going to be 100% alone if you go because no hospital will let anyone else in with you.  That has changed how we see all emergencies now and created a huge distrust and anger in our society.    Distrust is bad and that is something we should not let happen to the dentist. If you are having tooth pain issues then you should be able to deal with it normally.  I wanted to talk about my experience and the process I went through just to give you a heads up of how it can go in 2021.

Things are flat-out different in 2021 and we are now living in a new world.  For my pandemic, I was able to be home with them and we were able to actually start better habits that we always brushed off due to school and work. We decided to get serious about our dental health.   We figured since in many cases the dentist was simply not a viable option to visit that we should up our game of health so we wouldn’t have to do an emergency visit.  We found out we could save money to by cutting the cost of teeth issues and problems.

This meant that we as a family decided to change our habits and get better on our own dental routines.  The major thing we did was add extra brushing to our daily lives.  Yes, three times a day we brushed our teeth and made a good habit of it.  It did cause us to spend a little more on amazon for toothpaste but we thought it was a wise investment.  This was because we were eating and drinking more at home than we would on a normal daily schedule.  So we thought we could cut down on tartar and plaque buildup by putting more protection on our teeth.  But even if you are doing all the things right you may still have tooth pain and that is because a real issue has happened.

For me different temperature foods made my mouth hurt.  There would be a sensitivity and a bit of pain on my left side of my mouth. So I did what anyone does, brush harder and add more toothpaste to the brush.  Then I tried to cut down on all soda that had acid in it.  Even Bubli if it was cold started to hurt my mouth and that is when I knew there was a problem.  I looked for a solution on Webmd and Youtube, but it all led me to the same disappointing solution, Aspirin or see a dentist.  I hate the lack of self-help available for dental issues.

But there is a certain truth to not being able to fix a real health problem. Truth is, there is not a lot of things you can do if you have a cavity and need it filled.  All the research I did led me to the same outcome of going to see a dentist.  So in all honesty, if you are having tooth pain and it doesn’t go away with taking vitamins and brushing, just go see your dentist if you know you are having a real problem. 

This year has been a wild one to start with.  Last year we had a pandemic that shut down the economy and at the beginning of 2021 we saw the capital stormed by left-wing extremest pretending to be right-wing.  It sure was a fun twist to the start of the year and all of that is not really important when it comes down to our own personal health.  What matters is that we are taking care of ourselves because none of that craziness really matters in our daily lives.  What my family ended up talking about this holiday was our health and how to keep our bodies strong for the possible hard times to come.  Part of that actually has to do with our own dental health as well.  We knew that we needed to be able to take care of our teeth and be our own dental assistants for the near future.  This means that we all put down some of the best habits we knew or had been told by doctors that were not in the room.

What really stuck with all of us and struck a real cord was the fact that our own diets affected our teeth more than our habits.  No matter who had the best dental habit if their diet did not match they had more dental issues.  We all went around the room and simply came to this conclusion.  That was a pretty good thing to think about and as we decided on how to keep each other safe and healthy we all decided that we needed to cut back on the things that would harm of in the future.  Sugar and acid became the baseline for a vast majority of our issues and because of this, we all thought that we could cut back on two main areas right away and keep our families from injuring them on a massive regular basis. 

Our families all decided that soda or pop along with coffee needed to be cut down on.  These are highly sugary or acidic drinks and in many cases both.  What these do is break down tooth enamel which most of us adults will never grow back again because our bodies have stopped producing it.  So this means that all we have is what we have left.  Now that means that we need to preserve what we have to be healthy.  So set up good alternatives and water, and tea had to top the list.  The fun non-sugar pops are filled with acid and that is just as bad as drinking coffee so diet cokes and Zevias simply had to be removed from our healthy list.  

With this in place we all decided we needed to make good habits to drink more water.  This increases saliva production and helps to clean out mouths in multiple ways. It also keeps us hydrated and able to be more healthy in other ways.  We all decided to get nice water bottles and stainless steel containers to also help take over some of our habits on drinking coffee and replacing it with water.  So far It has worked very well for myself and most of us. So give these thoughts a try this year and think about staying healthy when times get tough. 

This time of year I find myself reflecting on a lot of different things.  That is because the holidays are over and now that all the extra time spent with family and friends is mostly over I have some extra time on my hands.  It is also a time to go over all the conversations that have been had with the rest of my circle and it allows me to look at my life and maybe even take their advice.  One topic that came up this year was obviously our health with covid-19.  But surprisingly there are a lot of different parts of health that were discussed and we all got on the topic of our dental health and bright teeth.  A lot of stories got passed along and some of them were from my own past.

I remember my first attempt at wanting to get brighter teeth.  My sister had actually decided that she wanted amazing white teeth for a prom.  I was a few years younger, but to be honest it got me thinking about having white teeth as well.  What we did was decide to split the cost of some tooth whitening strips.  This was the best idea we thought we had ever come up with and for two weeks we spent each night with these nasty gell-like strips on our teeth.  It was fun because we were family and we ended up reading or playing on the computer to pass the 15 minutes of not licking or touching our teeth.  With the strips back then it was actually pretty hard to do and not to get them to move.  But day after day our teeth slowly got bright white.  It was a pretty cool experience, but we also felt some differences between us.  I found out that my teeth were much more sensitive than my sisters.  In fact, my teeth began to hurt a lot doing these strips and I was more than happy to see it all be done with.  But with the pain, I still had super bright and white teeth. 

Now that I look back I know I was actually probably damaging my teeth and that something was wrong.  So instead of ever doing that again I now was able to talk about the special toothpaste I use to brighten my teeth without the sensitivity. This for me was only brought to my attention because of my incredible wife.  What I do now is use charcoal toothpaste.  It is an amazing product that is a little gross but works well without the side effects of strains up toothaches.  Yes, sensitivity is strained up toothaches and pain.  It is just stated in a nice way.  But what I found is that using this toothpaste I could keep my teeth nice a white by keeping up with brushing with the special paste once a day. 

But the charcoal toothpaste does have some downfalls and that it is truly made of charcoal. It really is black and has some big staining issues if you spit it in an area that is not important. There are black spots all over the sink even if you are not spitting paste itself.  It is just an after product of the whole process.  But it does work well, so give it a try.