How can I best care for my child’s teeth?

Good dental hygiene habits should begin before your child’s first tooth comes in. Wiping your baby’s gums with a soft damp cloth after feedings helps to prevent the buildup of bacteria. When teeth appear, start using a soft children’s toothbrush twice a day.

Once your child is preschool-age, start using fluoride toothpaste. Don’t cover the brush with toothpaste; a pea-sized amount is just right (see picture above). Young children tend to swallow most of the toothpaste, and swallowing too much fluoride toothpaste can cause permanent stains on their teeth.

What about using fluoride tablets?
Fluoride helps make teeth strong by hardening the tooth enamel. Many cities are required to add fluoride to tap water. If you live in an area where the tap water doesn’t contain fluoride, your doctor may prescribe daily fluoride tablets when your child is about 6 months old. Fluoride is an important part of your child’s dental health, but don’t give him or her more than the directions call for. If you miss a dose, don’t give your child extra fluoride to make up. Just as with swallowed toothpaste, too much oral fluoride can cause stains on your child’s teeth.

What are cavities?

Cavities are holes that are formed when bacteria (germs) in your mouth use the sugar in food to make acid. This acid eats away at the teeth. Cavities are the most common disease in children. Good tooth care can keep cavities from happening in your child

Is my child at risk for cavities?

Your child might be at risk for cavities if he or she eats a lot of sugary foods (such as raisins, cookies and candy) and drinks a lot of sweet liquids (such as fruit juice and punch, soda and sweetened drinks). Your child also might be at risk if he or she has any of the following risk factors:

* Was born early (prematurely) or weighed very little at birth (low birth weight)
* Has ongoing special health care needs
* Has white spots or brown areas on any teeth
* Does not go to the dentist very often

Minimize snacking, which increases acid production in the mouth. Avoid high-sugar drinks, chewing gum with sugar, or sucking on sugary candy. Consider getting a dental sealant applied to your molars to help prevent cavities. Use mouth wash and toothpaste with fluoride.

Face brightener

Try this skin saver from Skinsational Skin and Body Spa in Carlsbad, California. Soak a washcloth in warm chamomile tea with three drops of lavender oil; wring dry, and press onto face. Chamomile tea contains azulene, an anti-inflammatory that calms skin.

Cavity fighter

Want healthy teeth? Sip some antioxidant-rich white tea. “Polyphenol antioxidants in tea inhibit the growth of oral bacteria, like those that cause tooth decay,”

First-aid fix

Treat minor scrapes, bug bites, and sunburn with green tea, which contains tannins that act as a natural antiseptic and relieve itching and swelling. Just apply cooled tea with a cotton ball.

Tension buster

In a British study, people who drank black tea four times a day for six weeks calmed down more quickly in stressful situations than those who didn’t drink tea. Black, green, and oolong teas all contain theanine, an amino acid that helps the brain and body relax.

How is bad breath caused? Well, the congregation of excess bacteria in your mouth can trigger a bad odour in your mouth so when you take care of your mouth, your aim should be getting rid of all of that bacteria. These tips below stream out the things you can do to avoid bad breath.
1) Brush twice a day

Once as soon as you wake up and once before you go to bed. This way you are clearing your mouth of any bacteria especially at night, after your meal. At night, your mouth can hold amazing amounts of bacteria so brushing reduces the amount. Use a soft tooth brush so that your gums don’t recede or you won’t hurt yourself.

2) Use a tongue scraper or a tongue cleaner and a floss

A lot of bacteria stays on your tongue which can cause a lot of bad breath so to clear out all of that bacteria, use a tongue scraper or a tongue cleaner to take off the yellow gunk that may stay on your tongue at times and will get rid of the bacteria. Using a floss every now and then will make sure that bacteria doesn’t stick in corners too.

3) Avoid the spice and pick the mints

Spicy food, onions and garlic are the lords of leaving bad odour in your mouth so you can easily combat this by finishing a good Indian takeaway with parsley, mint or the best is fennel seeds. This way your mouth is temporarily masked of any smell and then you can go home and brush up.

4) Saliva stops smell

Saliva is really good because it flushes out the bacteria out of your mouth throughout the day. A dry mouth means that there is no saliva to push out all of those bacteria so your mouth can smell. This is why sometimes in the morning after a good night’s sleep, your mouth can smell because there is not a lot of saliva being produced when you are asleep. Water is a good way you can constantly keep flushing out the bacteria and the other benefit is that you can keep your saliva flowing to clean out your mouth of any bacteria. But watch out, alcohol and coffee won’t do you any favours because all they do is dry out your mouth further and probably accentuate the smell.

5) Chewing gum is good

The main point of chewing gum isn’t to get the fresh minty smell but even though it does cover up bad breath with minty smells, it is temporary. What chewing gum does is that it stimulates saliva to fight the bacteria.

6) Choose the right mouthwash

Buy those mouthwashes that fight bacteria, not just the ones that mask the smell caused by bad bacteria in your mouth. You can get these by looking carefully in the right shops or by contacting your dentist to give you the mouthwash that specifically says it combats bacteria.

7) The dentist is there to help

If you have any issues, contact your dentist and don’t forget visiting your dentist at least twice a year. Bad breath can be caused by gum diseases or other mouth problems so it might not be able to go away that easily. Your dentist is always ready to help you.

“Poor children experience rates twice as high as those of their more affluent peers, and their disease is more likely to be untreated,” they point out.

Xylitol, approved in the United States for use in food since 1963, has been shown to effectively prevent tooth decay by inhibiting the growth of bacteria that cause cavities. These previous studies have primarily involved chewing gum or lozenges used in school-age children with permanent teeth.

Milgrom’s team evaluated the effectiveness of using xylitol-containing syrup among 94 children, 9 to 15 months old, from the Republic of the Marshall Islands, where early childhood tooth decay is a serious health care problem.

“Our results suggest that exposure to xylitol (8 grams per day) in a twice-daily topical oral syrup during primary tooth eruption could prevent up to 70 percent of decayed teeth,” the investigators report. After an average of 10.5 months, 8 of 33 children (24.2 percent) receiving two doses of xylitol per day and 13 of the 32 children (40.6 percent) receiving three doses of xylitol per day had tooth decay, compared with 15 of the 29 children (51.7 percent) in a control group. The average numbers of decayed teeth were 0.6 in the two-dose xylitol group, one in the three-dose xylitol group and 1.9 in the control group.

For More information On Sweetener May Prevent Cavities