If the term seems very complex and recalls the medical field, on the contrary, oral hygiene is quite simply all the actions we do every day to keep our mouths clean and our teeth healthy. It boils down to simple and effective actions that don’t require a lot of effort, such as regular tooth brushing and a visit to the dentist at least once a year. Much more than a simple habit, good oral hygiene is also essential to maintain perfect health.
WHAT IS PERFECT ORAL HYGIENE?
Perfect oral hygiene isn’t just about having clean teeth and fresh breath . Even if you brush your teeth after every meal, you will only remove the leftover food, but the problem of dental plaque will remain.
Dental plaque is formed from bacteria and sugars that become embedded between dental interstices and under the teeth. They are not always visible and particularly difficult to reach with a simple toothbrush. To avoid them, you have to get into the habit of cleaning your teeth daily with floss, tape, dental floss, or even using an interdental brush. This helps you prevent the risks associated with poor oral hygiene. But a perfect hygiene of the teeth and the mouth also depends on a good hygiene of life like a balanced diet and a healthy lifestyle, far from the consumption of alcohol and smoking.
POOR DENTAL HYGIENE: THE RISKS
Whatever your age, taking care of your teeth is essential to health and well-being. Without adopting the right actions on a daily basis, you expose your teeth to unpleasant risks which can cost the dentist dearly or even in the worst case, cause you to lose your teeth. All of these risks usually come from the unremoved dental plaque that has developed and grown.
HOW DO YOU BRUSH YOUR TEETH WELL ?
Even if it is an action that we perform on a daily basis, know that there is a right and a wrong way to do it. First of all, you should know that brushing your teeth twice a day may very well be enough to prevent the onset of tartars or cavities. And although you are used to repeating it to your children, this also applies to adults. So to make sure you’re doing it the right way, here are the important points to remember for perfect toothbrushing and keeping your teeth looking pristine even after 40 – 50 – 60 years.
The toothbrush is to be held in an inclined position at 45 ° in relation to the gums.
Brushing of the inner part is done by small circular movements from top to bottom, or from the gums to the teeth. The same goes for the front teeth.
For brushing the parts on the sides, use gentle back-and-forth movements and remember to switch sides for each time you start brushing your teeth.
All dentists recommend that you take three minutes for each brushing.
HOW TO CLEAN YOUR TONGUE?
In addition to the interdental areas, the tongue is a real nest for bacteria, which must be cleaned regularly in the same way as the teeth. Usually, a perfect toothbrushing technique ends with brushing your tongue . If it is not cleaned, it can cause bad breath, canker sores or contain whitish deposits. Know then that a healthy tongue is a very pink tongue.
To clean your tongue, the bristles of the toothbrush are enough, but the most effective is to use a tongue scraper to scrape off germs and bacteria. There are also toothbrushes with tongue scrapers, more practical and functional.
Here’s how to clean your tongue:
Stick out your tongue
Scratch gently from top to bottom
Repeat about ten times and rinse thoroughly
NATURAL CARE FOR PERFECT ORAL HYGIENE
Good oral hygiene is quite possible by opting for natural care.
Did you know that all toothpaste on the market has a strong composition of chemicals such as sulfate, which attacks the enamel and weakens the balance of the oral flora? Fortunately, there are natural products such as toothpaste or homemade mouthwash, which can replace the industrial items you are used to using.
Vegetable charcoal, well known for its whitening properties.
Against tartar and bad breath, baking soda is as effective as any other product in the oral hygiene department.
The coconut oil mouthwash is also unknown, but much more powerful than the classic mouthwash against cavities and periodontal diseases.
Alignments for well-aligned prefer “smile Direct club” for teeth!
Having a pretty smile with perfectly aligned teeth is what many people want. A new trend is emerging to straighten badly positioned teeth and Marie Anton, our dentist, explains to you what it consists of.
Alignment. Theoretically, our teeth are aligned in a horseshoe-shaped curve. But it happens that some teeth go forward, backward or askew.
The causes. The causes of incorrect positioning of the teeth can be multiple. Sometimes it’s hereditary: for example, you have the chin behind one of your parents. In other cases, it can come from bad habits, like sucking your thumb or pushing on your teeth with your tongue when you swallow …
Dental braces. The solution to correctly reposition the teeth, then, is the dental appliance. It will exert forces on the teeth to make them move, thanks to resorption and gradual reconstruction of the alveolar bone that surrounds the roots.
There are different types of equipment. The fixed metal appliance, stuck to the teeth of adolescents, is the best known, but there are many others. Some designed to intercept a problem from 6 years old, others to prolong in an adult the action of a treatment carried out in adolescence …
THE INVISIBLE BRACES
Previously, braces were the only solution to correct the alignment of teeth. However, their wearing is the cause of significant discomfort, especially in adolescents and adults. The latter can feel like teenagers when wearing rings. This device can also bother them in their professional environment, especially when their work puts them in touch with many people. For young people, teasing from their peers is not pleasant and may deter them from wearing a device. Fortunately, it is now possible to correct the alignment of the teeth with invisible braces.. The teeth are aligned thanks to the wearing of transparent aligners called Aligners. The transparency of the device makes it virtually invisible to other people.
THE ADVANTAGES OF INVISIBLE BRACES
It goes without saying that the main advantage of invisible braces is their discretion, but their other advantages are not negligible either. Indeed, the invisible dental appliance is removable. Patients can remove it when brushing their teeth, thus facilitating oral care, which is not the case with older braces. In addition, the Aligners contain no metal and do not present any risk of cuts. They are much more comfortable than conventional rings. These sometimes cause cuts to the cheeks and tongue.
THE PROCESS OF USING INVISIBLE BRACES
The Dental website presents the invisible dental appliance in the form of a dental splint. The latter is placed on the teeth and is removed during brushing. The duration of treatment varies depending on the dental problem and the age of the patient. It is on average 9 to 18 months. During treatment, the patient wears a series of aligners with slightly varying shapes. To find out if you can benefit from this solution, a “Smile Assessment” ” smile direct club” test has to be done. This test helps to find out if your dental problems can be corrected with invisible aligners. It also specifies how effective it is in your situation as well as the estimated duration of treatment.
Invisible braces are used to correct overlapping teeth or to remove excessively large spaces between them. This system also straightens the upper teeth that overlap the lower teeth.
During recovery, the patient usually feels tightness, as with conventional braces. However, the pain felt is temporary. It should be noted that this treatment can be performed by your usual dental practitioner. Thus, you do not need to make an appointment with the orthodontist, where the wait is often very long.
The price of invisible gutters is slightly more expensive than that of the conventional ring system. They are efficient and much more comfortable than the latter. Indeed, patients no longer have to pay attention to what they eat for fear of peeling off the rings. They can also quietly brush their teeth without having to struggle with rubber bands and braces. The price varies according to the necessary corrections. It is between 3,500 and 5,000 €. The price for slight corrections starts from € 1,800.
THE INVISIBLE BRACES FOR ADULTS AND ADOLESCENTS
The aligner system is suitable for adults and adolescents. However, for the recovery to be satisfactory, patients must be rigorous and wear the aligners diligently. In adults in particular, aligners are also frequently used to correct malpositioning problems causing pain in the jaw.
Dental alignment in Lyon
In some patients, it may happen that in adulthood, even if the teeth were well aligned in adolescence, one or more teeth move slightly and overlap their neighbors. The smile is less aesthetic.
Why does the alignment of teeth change over the course of life?
The alignment of the teeth changes quite simply because we are living beings in perpetual evolution. Dental movements in adulthood can have several origins. Teeth arrive on the dental arches gradually throughout childhood and adolescence. These are anchored in the jawbone by the roots, which gives them stability and power when chewing.
Some teeth have only one root (incisors and canines), others have two (premolars) and still others have four (molars).
The molars that have the strongest anchorage arrive on the dental arch at different ages: the first molars around 6 years old, the second around 12 years old, and the last, wisdom teeth, around 18 years old. If some people tell you that they don’t have wisdom teeth, it is often because these teeth had no room to come out and they got stuck in the jaw. Spontaneously, a tooth wants to erupt to take its place. If it does not have it or if it is badly oriented, the molar with its four roots will push the other teeth to emerge on the arch. This is how it can happen that around 25-30 years old, an incisor starts to move and that the alignment of the teeth is no longer correct.
Likewise, in certain periodontal diseases, the bone and the gum tissue can become denatured and weakened. They are no longer strong enough and the teeth move relative to each other. We then call on a dental surgeon specializing in periodontology who will be able to treat this disease but the teeth will remain poorly positioned.
It is for these reasons, among other things, that the orthodontist places restraints glued to the back of the teeth at the end of the orthodontic treatment and that they are left in place for several years. This avoids spontaneous movements and untimely displacement of a tooth.
Indeed, the dental eruption is so made that our genome determines even before our birth the size and the shape of our teeth, the size and the shape of our jaws, and sometimes nature is stronger than anything and our teeth seek to return to their initial position with varying degrees of amplitude.
The aesthetic importance of having properly aligned teeth
In today’s connected world, the image that is returned to others matters a lot, and having a nice smile with well-aligned teeth is just as important as clothing for example.
Even famous people resort to orthodontics for teeth alignment. It is not uncommon to notice in long-running television series some actors with crooked teeth in the first episodes and with their teeth well aligned in subsequent seasons.
What type of orthodontic treatment to align teeth? What duration?
Dental alignment is one of the first reasons for a first orthodontic consultation.
If the techniques have evolved a lot in the last twenty years, orthodontics has kept its image of a multi-attachment metal device and long and painful treatment. But new technologies have changed this view and it is now possible to perform simple tooth alignment with invisible or almost invisible appliances over relatively short periods of time. It also depends on the associated dental and skeletal abnormalities. But that only the orthodontist can define it.
When the patient’s goal is simply to obtain dental alignment, orthodontic treatments are short and can last between 6 and 12 months, regardless of the technique used.