Oral piercing and dental health problems

Lip piercing, tongue piercing or cheek piercing are quiet popular, I personally love piercings and I’ve been thinking about getting one once I finish my braces treatment. However, before you or I hit the piercing parlor we should have certain consideration in mind:

The most common dental problems we can have if get oral piercings are fractured teeth and infection. Teeth can get chipped or fractured when we eat, talk, chew or even sleep. If a tooth gets fractured on the enamel it would only need a filling, but if it goes deepen then a root canal or extraction would be necessary.

Some other dental health problems caused by oral piercing are:

• Infection
• Swelling
• Pain
• Scarring
• Fractured or chipped teeth
• Loss of taste
• Mouth sores
• Tooth loss
• Gum damage

 Is tongue piercing the most dangerous?

Since tongue has plenty of bacteria, dentists find relation between oral infections and other kind of infections in the body. When the tongue gets pierced, the bacteria on the tongue can be released into the bloodstream and travel towards the hearts.

Therefore, before considering a tongue piercing or in any other part of your mouth, you should visit a dentist first to check up your oral health and of course, go to piercing parlor that gathers the right sanitary conditions.

And moreover, you assume the commitment of keeping a good oral hygiene to keep your mouth and your bling safe. 

Exercises to stop grinding teeth

Grinding teeth (bruxism in dental jargon) is like snoring or sleep apnea, you do not you have it until somebody else tells you. You can be making the creepiest sounds with your mouth at night but you can stay totally unaware of it if you sleep alone, however your mouth would give you’re the alert.

Worn-out and cracked teeth and aching jaw can be the signs of hectic teeth at night. One common solution is sleeping a teeth grinding guard that I’m sure most people hate wearing or find useless. That is why I want to present you this natural solution: mouth exercises.

Mouth exercises will loosen your jaws and stop your teeth grinding:

Exercise #1: Try relaxing your jaw completely so your upper and bottom teeth could barely touch each other. When you feel your teeth clenching on your jaws tightening, try to “catch” yourself and relax them.

Exercise #2: Loose your lips and make a “brrr” sound. Only your lips should vibrate, keep doing it until your lips feel really loose.

Exercise #3: massage the area around your lips before you go to sleep.

Exercise #4: when laying in bed tough the back side of your teeth with the tip of your tongue.  Start from the last teeth of the bottom row all along to the other side, and do the same with the back aside of the upper jaw.  Do it slowly.

Exercise #5: Pout your lips like a fish and make a wide grin. Alternate a few times, and then tap your jaw and cheeks lightly with your fingertips.

Hope this makes you feel better!

Tips for sensitive teeth care

Although you have the whitest and straight marbles, having sensitive teeth can make your perfect smile turn into a sour grin.

The sudden ache you feel is caused is produced by the disturbance on the nerve endings of your teeth. No too cold neither too hot drinks, nor too sour or sweet food are good for me. Even opening my mouth can let the air make me ache. Damn, how can I enjoy life like this?

Coping with sensitive teeth

• Do not brush your teeth too hard. First of all you have to choose a gentle-bristled toothbrush thus you can keep your oral hygiene without causing your gums heaving away from your teeth. If this happens, it exposes the protective layer of your teeth roots, called dentin, leaving your tooth nerves sensitive to all kind of stimuli.
   
• Get sensitive teeth toothpaste. Toothpaste makers think of you, so you can find toothpaste for your sensitive teeth. Use them regularly and you would notice how sensitivity will eventually decrease.
  You can apply a thin layer of toothpaste with a piece of cotton on the sensitive tooth roots. Make sure you use a fluoridated and not a tartar control paste.
   
• Take it easy with the mouthwash. There are some mouthwash products that contain acidic chemicals and alcohol that worsen your sensitive tooth. Therefore, it is better you go for neutral fluoride solutions that would not aggravate the sensitivity of your teeth.
   
• Avoid staining food and drinks. In order to save you money and pain in tooth whitening treatments and whitening products you better avoid this kind of foods. You can try using a straw when drinking colas or any other staining drinks.
   
• Avoid erosive food and drinks. Erosive means it produces a reaction in your sensitive teeth, such as smoothies, ice cream and others like that.  After you take this foods and drinks, it is good you rinse your mouth with water with a neutral fluoride mouthwash. You have to wait up to an hour for brushing your teeth.
   
• Get mild teeth whitening products. Most of them contain peroxide and baking soda which increases the sensitivity of teeth dentins. Consult your dentist for teeth bleaching products for your condition.

Via: Tips for moms

Braces color, should I go colored or white?

On a previous post we talked about those little O-like colored rubber bands called ligatures, now let’s talk aesthetics for all you “dental fashionistas”…

Braces colors are like the rainbow, and considering that wearing braces is far from favoring to our looks, having the chance top choose our braces color is such a luxury.

By default color of braces is white or "transparent", as I prefer to call it. They look neat and “invisible” for the first days, but as time and food go by they will get awfully tarnished.

Foods and drinks stain ligatures and braces rubber bands, so they best thing to avoid the yellow teeth look is choosing colored braces.

Choose colors for braces according to your style:

• Classic and discrete: smoke, platinum, light gray and dark gray.

• Girly: light pink, hot pink and fuchsia.

• Boyish: blue, navy blue, metallic blue, glow blue and cobalt blue.

• Emo and goth: black and metallic black.

• Ecological: green, emerald, jade, glow green, light green, dark green, spring green and metallic green.

• Shockers: gold, orange, maroon, metallic purple, azure, sapphire, glow orange, red and teal.

• Demanding: having ligatures of different colors on each tooth.

In case you have no choice by sticking to white colored braces make sure to cut down a bit on staining food and drinks as mustard, ketchup, curry, wine, coffee, tea, etc.

Ligatures, what are they?

If you are getting your braces soon you should know the dentist will place little rubber bands called ligatures that have the noble duty of fixing the archwire to the braces.

These ligatures will be changed on a frequent braces determined by your dentist (I get mine changed every weekend or once every two weeks).

And why they don’t just stuck strongly the braces and spare me from this weekly naggy ritual?

Elastic ligatures provide different force intensity to make your teeth move faster, especially to close the empty spaces of tooth extractions and tooth gaps.

And for the simple reason that your braces will be removed at the end of the treatment, so they just need a temporal and easy-to-remove support as braces ligatures provide.

Do ligatures ache?

Yes, they do when you fist get them on, so will need to have a soft diet for a few days. But as days go by they will eventually stretch out and you will have no tooth ache problems.