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Tips To Keep Your Dentures Functioning and Looking Well
When we think about dentures, we usually think about the teeth which you can plunk out of your mouth and put them in the glass filled with water for the night before sleeping. This is how we usually think about caring for dentures. While it is not quite difficult to care for dentures, you have to make sure that you are vigilant in taking care of these faux teeth.
Now, if you are about to have dentures or you have new dentures, you need to have idea about the basics in order to know how to take care of your dentures in the best possible way.
What are dentures?
In simple words, dentures are the synthetic teeth which you get in place of the natural teeth you lose. Dentures can be full, partial or custom-made. Now, these dentures normally do not look like natural but they can provide you with an adequate ability to chew your foods in normal way.
Why is it important to maintain your dentures?
While it is true that dentures do not require same care as that for natural teeth, you still need to make sure that plaque doesn’t build up on the teeth of dentures. The plaque on dentures can cause cavity in the remaining natural teeth. Moreover, this plaque can contribute to the development of gum disease as well. As a result, certain bad oral conditions and bad breath may be the undesired results you would start suffering from. Hence, you have to make sure that you take care of your dentures as seriously as your natural teeth.
Cleaning the dentures properly
The best thing about dentures is that you can ensure proper oral hygiene by taking good care of them. They require simple cleaning. After every meal, you will have to get those out of your mouth and rinse them with water. This rinsing will let the food debris get out of the small puts and textures of the dentures. While you are not wearing dentures, you need to soak them in water. You can also use a solution recommended by your dentist.
You need to brush your dentures just like you brush your natural teeth. Normal toothbrush and toothpaste may be effective but you can also go for the use of toothbrush and toothpaste made specifically for dentures. They can be even more effective.
Safely whiten your teeth
Sometimes, the shade of dentures may start to make you unhappy. At this point, you can consider whitening your dentures. However, it is essential to get dentist’s advice regarding the product you need to use. The reason is that normal whitening gels and bleaches can weaken the synthetic material of dentures.
Chocolate a Day Keeps the Doctor at Bay?
I’m always interested in looking into the foods and drinks that are actually healthy for you if you eat them everyday in moderation. Those key words always get so many people. I mean, think about wine. They say a glass of red wine a day is healthy for you. But how many people take that information and run with it as if drinking red wine all day, everyday is healthy when it’s absolutely not?
So, with that said, today I’m wanting to talk about chocolate. And no, not your typical sweet milk chocolate. The healthier cousin, dark chocolate.
Let’s get into the good news. Eating chocolate every day could help prevent diabetes (type 2) as well as insulin resistance, something you don’t want happening.
A study found that people who eat 100g of chocolate a day have reduced resistance to insulin. However, those who answered as chocolate eaters were found to be more physically active and had higher levels of education than those who claimed not to eat chocolate on a daily basis. This can somewhat obscure the study considering those people are naturally healthier as is.
Still, cocoa may represent something that can improve your cardiovascular health, though there still remains to be more research on the topic.
Consuming dark chocolate in moderate amounts daily (>100g) has also been found to help reduce blood pressure and improve brain power and memory. While the specifics are still uncertain, these positive effects suggest a little bit of chocolate a day is actually good for you.
The thing to keep in mind with all of this, however, is the wording of moderate amounts. That doesn’t mean 10 chocolate slabs just because you normally consume 20. It means under 100g a day, which translates to a few chocolate hearts or so. And remember, stick to the dark chocolate. Milk chocolate has more additives and less of the good stuff.
As with everything, I’m going to part by stressing the fact that you can’t just take a bit of information and run with it as fact for every situation. Just like red wine, dark chocolate needs to be consumed in small amounts and small amounts only. There’s no reason you can’t hold yourself to just a few pieces every morning or night. Don’t make it a snack. Rather, make it something that you incorporate as a daily ritual (such as having it with your daily glass of red wine or with a cup of hot tea).
Early Holiday Dental Wish List
When the end of September comes around, I always make a point to start crafting out my rough list of things I want for the holidays from my family. In other words, I begin creating my holiday list. (It helps that my mom almost always wants it no later than early October, so that’s why I’ve become accustomed to doing it around this point in the year.)
As I brainstorm what I want, I tend to break the list down into two different categories, and there are two ways of doing these two categories (depending on what I’m feeling that year): a needs/wants list and a high ticket/low ticket list.
I’ve found that usually have the most success following the first method, considering it’s a time in the year that I get things I truly have been needing around my house or in my life to some capacity. This is where I remember to ask for things like underwear, new shoes (for formal wear or exercising), technology peripherals, and even kitchenware.
When I go the other route, though, I’m almost always asking for things that I don’t really need, which can defeat the purpose of asking for gifts. I would much rather ask for something I know I’ll use rather than something I “think” I want.
This year, I’m trying to focus on more health related items, and some of them are bigger ticket items I normally wouldn’t go out of my way to get for myself. So, what better way to acquire them than putting them on my holiday wish list?
Water pick
These aren’t super expensive by any means, but they’re not the price of any little toothbrush. I tend to find it somewhere in between. And as someone who’s restoring their gum health at home, I feel a water pick is the perfect item to ask for in order to improve my dental health.
Electric toothbrush
While some of these brushes can go upwards of $100, I’m looking more in the range of $50 to make it affordable on my parents but also keeping it lowkey and not super gaudy. Nonetheless, electric toothbrushes have shown to have better cleaning capabilities than brushing manually (though marginally so). Just as well, it’s easy to buy new brush heads and reduce my plastic waste by doing this instead of buying a new brush every three months. Running on electricity won’t affect my power bill in the slightest, so long as I unplug it when done charging, so this is an efficient way to get my teeth the deep clean they need daily.