Life is busy for many San Diego residents. At times, it’s impossible to get all the “gotta do’s” done and many are postponed or dropped altogether. Sometimes your car has to wait another 500 miles for an oil change or you are a month late replacing your furnace filter or you realize that you’ve had a leaky faucet since the Clinton administration. Many important things get put on the back burner, but we beg you not to disregard indispensable dental care.
Here are some prevalent dental care shortcuts. Are you guilty of any of them?
Rushing Through Brushing
Your teeth deserve a careful two minutes or more. Slow and methodical beats quick and dirty. Use a method to make sure you get every tooth. Playing one of your favorite two- or three-minute songs may help you go the distance.
Only Seeing Your Dentist When You Feel Tooth Pain
We hope none of our patients put off evaluations and cleanings. When you feel tooth pain, it may be way too late to prevent a filling or even a root canal.
Neglecting Professional Cleanings
When softer plaque turns to calculus, you can’t clean it away with a toothbrush. Six-month cleanings help get rid of the calculus or tartar before it can impair your enamel or irritate your gums.
Using Floss Picks Instead of Dental Floss
While it’s better to floss with a floss pick than to not floss at all, it’s important to understand that floss picks can only clean a part of the tooth’s surface. A floss pick holds just a small length of floss stretched in a straight line. Looking down, a tooth is shaped somewhat round or oval. A straight piece of floss just doesn’t make sense geometrically because it doesn’t conform to the shape of the tooth as well as traditional floss. When you wrap a string of floss completely around the circumference of a tooth, you can more thoroughly clean that important area around and just below the gumline. We have seen patients who are dutiful floss pick users who developed decay in a tiny crack the floss pick bypassed day after day.
At Marcos Ortega DDS, we encourage our patients to practice preventative dentistry to guard their smiles for life. We offer the full spectrum of general and cosmetic dental procedures including dental crowns, restorative dentistry, dental implants, teeth whitening, and sedation dentistry. For more information, call Marcos Ortega DDS today at 619-295-4545 or visit https://www.mysandiegosmiles.com/.
Contact Marcos Ortega DDS: 619-295-4545
Location (Tap to open in Google Maps):
306 Walnut Ave Ste 25
San Diego, California
92103