West Bowmanville Family Dental is a family-oriented dental practice, and we especially love seeing children. With the right preventive dental care, kids’ dental visits can be enjoyable, and we strive to make them fun. Our dental team works with parents and children, ensuring everyone knows how cavities form and how to prevent them., When you have the right information, tooth decay in Newcastle is a preventable disease.
How Does Tooth Decay Begin?
When you eat foods high in sugars or containing processed carbohydrates, these turn to sugar once consumed, and the bacteria naturally present in your mouth feast on these sugars. The bacteria are found in dental plaque, a sticky biofilm, and as they thrive, they excrete toxins and acids. These acids weaken tooth enamel, the hard protective coating over teeth, eventually causing cavities.
Other factors influence cavity formation, including the balance of good to bad bacteria in the mouth, called the oral microbiome and the mouth’s pH level. Saliva quality is another important factor as saliva helps maintain more neutral pH levels and can help wash away food particles and some harmful bacteria. If harmful bacteria are allowed to thrive, cavities will likely develop in teeth. Eventually, these cavities can become so deep they reach the tooth nerve right in the centre of the tooth, causing tooth sensitivity and pain.
Making Sure Your Kids Teeth Stay Healthy and Strong and Cavity Free
Good oral care at home needs to begin right from the start, as a baby’s gums can be gently wiped with a clean washcloth after each feeding. As soon as baby teeth first appear, they can be cleaned carefully with a baby toothbrush. Even milk contains sugars, so it’s important to remove the residue. Another potential problem is giving a baby a bottle containing formula or another sugary fluid such as fruit juice at bedtime. Putting a baby to sleep with a bottle of sugary liquid allows their teeth to remain coated with sugars overnight. During sleep, your mouth is naturally drier as less saliva is produced. These drier conditions allow harmful bacteria to thrive. If you want to put your young child to bed with a drink, choose plain water. If they have milk before bed, make sure you clean their teeth before they fall asleep.
Ideally, we like to start regularly seeing children when they are still very young, at around age three. The sooner a child visits a dentist in Clarington, the sooner they can become accustomed to a new environment, hopefully well before they develop any dental problems, and so they grow up seeing regular dental visits as an ordinary event and nothing to fear. We are extremely gentle when seeing young children and work hard to make sure they feel relaxed and comfortable.
Learning How to Care for Kids Teeth
We know it isn’t always easy to clean a child’s mouth, but our dental team can show you some useful ways to ensure you clean their teeth thoroughly with minimal stress to you both. We can also advise on the correct toothbrush and toothpaste to use and can show you how much is appropriate. When your child has enough teeth, so they contact each other, you will need to start flossing between them, and again we can show you the best way to do this task. As your child gets older, we can work with them directly, gently explaining why good dental care in Courtice is important for enjoying a healthy and happy smile. With your help, we can create a dental home for your child where they feel safe and secure receiving excellent preventative dental care.