Deep Cleaning

Deep cleaning is a dental procedure performed to prevent or treat periodontal disease. Periodontal refers to the area of the gum that surrounds the tooth and holds it in place. The initial and primary treatment of periodontal disease is deep cleaning. When tartar and other rough bacteria capture your teeth, deep cleaning is the only way to eliminate it.

Why Deep Cleaning Is Necessary

A deep cleaning is recommended when a patient is having some of the gum disease. Gum disease can be described as a silent, persistent bacterial infection that can affect your gums and the bone that supports your teeth as well as your overall body health. Gum disease has been associated with increased risk of stroke, heart disease, pregnancy complications and other respiratory infections. Deep cleaning is much less invasive than gum surgery. As with any medical or dental condition, it’s better to treat the individual effects before they require more complicated forms of treatment.

How Often Deep Cleaning Is Required

Your mouth is a place where plaque builds up every day. Plaque is a clear, sticky film that is full of bacteria and is removed when you brush or floss your teeth. While you may do your best to clean your teeth, it is inevitable that you may not get all the plaque off near your gum line. Plaque eventually hardens to become tartar which is also known as calculus. When you go to your dentist he measures it with a special instrument and gives you a concern about removing it or not. So when the dentist tells you that they won’t do a traditional cleaning for you, listen to them. They know that a regular cleaning won’t stop your periodontal disease from worsening.

After Deep Cleaning

Soreness, sensitive teeth and bleeding gums are normal after deep cleaning at the dentist’s office. Some effects are due to cleaning tools that make contact with inflamed gums which bleed easily. Another effect of deep cleaning is newly exposed areas of the teeth that were previously covered with tartar. Removing tartar exposes the tooth roots and it takes a while for your teeth to acclimate to the new vulnerability. Bleeding, uncomfortable and sensitive teeth after cleaning should last no more than a week. Swollen or bleeding gums improve more gradually over time, provided you brush carefully and regularly. General discomfort due to dental cleaning, however, disappears in one or two days of most of the patients.

Taking good care of teeth after a deep cleaning treatment helps your gums heal by reducing the common triggers of pain and sensitivity. Wait at least a day before flossing and brush your teeth carefully with a soft toothbrush while your gums are still sore. Avoid eating foods or drinking liquids that set off your sensitivity. If your teeth are sensitive three or four weeks after treatment or you have other concerns, contact your dentist for a follow up visit.

But at what point do you start neglecting your health because you’re living paycheck to paycheck? I’ve been there, trust me. But that’s not the answer. Those sorts of things should never be set aside, even if you’re short on cash. Budgeting, however, is that answer.

Just because you’re not used to a budget doesn’t mean you can’t keep one going. And just because you’re gonna be tight on your bills month in and month out doesn’t mean you shouldn’t budget. Actually, that’s EXACTLY why you should be on a budget. Because once you get good at it, your month-to-month financial situation won’t be as tight as it used to. You’ll learn how to save more here and there. And you’ll be tracking every dollar all the while.

I think the biggest change that people are wary of and don’t enjoy is just tracking their spending. If you can track what you spend and when, you can keep an eye on what things in your life need to be monitored more, what needs to be reigned in, and what you have more freedom on spending on.

Because in all reality, doing things on a monthly basis like budgeting is already ingrained in our culture. Guess what you pay from one month to the next (and you happily do it, too)? Netflix. Or Spotify. Or subscription boxes. So, paying your bills and tracking your budget on spending shouldn’t be hard since you’re already used to paying certain things monthly. Heck, you’re probably fine with allocating 20 bucks for a haircut every single month, so what’s bothering you about tracking that?

All it takes is sitting down with yourself (and your partner if applicable) and tracking where it’s all going. Write it down every time you buy something. Just write it down. At the end of one month, you can see where everything went and adjust accordingly for the next month.

Ultimately, you shouldn’t be compromising your general health (or your dental health) just because you think it costs you more money. Those are two things that you should be absolutely okay with spending money on since both are related to your life, your general well being, and your everyday ability to get around.

Dreaming of Teeth

Whether you remember them or not you dream every single night. It is a response from your brain during Rapid Eye Movement (R.E.M.) sleep. An average adult dreams up to two hours a night during a normal eight hour sleep cycle. The average length of a dream is twenty minutes. Dreams are often only remembered when they are interrupted from us waking up. People and cultures all over the world have theorized what dreams mean and symbolize. An extremely common dream that the majority of the population has experienced is losing their teeth.

While obviously not confirmed, it is said that people who dream of losing their teeth are usually experiencing some sort of major loss in their life. This is something that is more of a wives tale than anything, but the fact that it’s been around so long shows the intricacies of the human mind. In fact, our psyche is so advanced that dreams are still shrouded in mystery since we simply can’t pinpoint what their function is, how we dream, why we dream, and why we even conjure up the things we do within our dreams.

The thing to consider with such a claim about dreams and loss is that someone out there somewhere really has dreamt about losing their teeth right after losing someone in their life. But that’s the thing: with 7 billion people on this planet, it’s pretty obvious that someone will have an association like that. It’s bound to happen in some capacity.

I’ve also heard about people dreaming that they’re losing their teeth when they have actual dental problems. To me, this makes much more sense in the grand scheme of your body’s awareness of itself. I mean, if you just had a tooth pulled or happen to have a cavity, it sort of makes sense that you would dream about losing a tooth, you know?

When all is said and done, the main thing to consider about dreams is that no one knows how, why, or what we dream just yet. Sure, science is progressing forward ever so slightly on dreams, but any layperson telling you that your dreams mean X or Y have zero clue what they’re actually talking about. You want to know why? Because they’d be famous and rich if what they said were honestly true. In fact, apply that thought process to most incredulous claims you hear and you’ll never have to wonder if someone is full of it ever again.