Welcome to the Clopper’s Mill Dental Care blog! We’re excited to provide those of you who live in Germantown, Gaithersburg, and Clarksburg with simple oral health tips, advice, and education that can help you stay healthy in between visits to our dentist office. We will discuss topics such as proper brushing, healthy dental habits, common dental myths, effective oral health care techniques, and plenty of other topics can help your smile look and feel great.
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The Basics of Oral Health
Dentist Germantown
The Basics of Oral Health
We’re dedicated to providing quality service for you and your family in whatever way we can—that’s what the Clopper’s Mill Dental Care Blog is all about.
Before we dive into more complex and expansive dental care topics, let’s start with the basics. Here are the essential dental care habits needed to achieve a great smile and exceptional oral health.
Brush your teeth.
This is the ultimate no-brainer of proper dental hygiene and health. If you can’t manage anything else, you must first manage to brush your teeth, and more importantly, brush them effectively. Proper brushing means using short, gentle strokes (especially near the gumline), and thorough brushing on and around all areas of the teeth, including the outer surface, inner surface, chewing surface (the ends of your teeth), gumline area, and tongue (we’ll discuss the tongue more below).
Using a soft-bristle, small-head toothbrush is often the best choice for proper dental hygiene, as the soft bristles are gentler and more forgiving to sensitive gums, and the smaller head allows for easier access for brushing in harder-to-reach areas of the mouth. Replace your toothbrush once it becomes worn out, or after you have a cold—toothbrushes can harbor germs that can potentially lead to reinfection.
Many dentists believe that two minutes of thorough, focused brushing is effective for preventing cavities, gum disease, and other dental ailments, so listening to one of your favorite songs as a brushing timer could be a safe bet.
Floss daily.
Flossing is an often-overlooked way to improve oral and dental health—when done with the right technique. Proper flossing is all about using a gentle, back-and-forth motion to remove food particles and buildup from in between teeth, without irritating or damaging the gums. Wrap your floss around two fingers, contour the floss around the tooth, and use that back-and-forth motion to remove buildup until the floss makes contact with your gums. Flossing will ultimately improve gum health and dental hygiene, and remove often-overlooked particles that can contribute to bad breath.
Clean your tongue.
Cleaning the tongue is another overlooked aspect of dental hygiene and oral health, but it has numerous benefits. Tongues are often covered in bacteria, and can lead to a number of oral health problems. Using a toothbrush or a drug store tongue cleaner can remove toxins and bacteria from the tongue, improve bad breath, enhance taste bud sensations, and promote proper oral and digestive health. Use a tongue scraper every day in the morning, and brush your tongue in a back-and-forth and side-to-side motion.
Visit the dentist regularly.
Frequent dental exams and checkups are crucial for oral health. They can help catch dental diseases in their early stages, and prevent diseases from happening in the first place.
At minimum, visit your dentist once per year to identify and prevent cavities, improve the cosmetic look of teeth, enhance gum health, and educate yourself on new oral health techniques. Your dentist is dedicated to answering all of your dental questions, and treating your whatever is compromising your oral health.
This is the true focus of Clopper’s Mill Dental Care: to provide quality service, a comfortable dentist office experience, and preventative dental care and education—so you can have healthy teeth and stop dental diseases before they start. We aim to provide dental health care, not disease care.
When you need a dentist or oral surgeon in the Germantown, Gaithersburg, or Clarksburg areas, choose the number one rated dentist’s office in the area: Clopper’s Mill Dental Care.