Beautiful smiles reflect a lifestyle. A healthy lifestyle reflects choices. And your choices could help you develop new habits.
Life style change doesn’t have to be hard; it could be done one step at a time with a little planning. Your common sense could guide you much more than scientific knowledge.
Let’s start with some bad snack choices.
What makes a snack a bad choice?
Candies and chocolate treats and anything else that satisfies sweet teeth contain increasingly high volumes of sugars that cause and accelerate tooth decay. The emphasis is increasingly. As you consume more and more sweets, your taste buds adapt and lose their sensitivity. You need to consume sweeter treats to taste the sweetness.
Sugar also is the favorite food for bacteria and other nasty stuff that thrive on it. Without the sugar, many will die or return to a healthy balance. Life is mostly not about good or bad, but it is about balance.
Bacteria cause damage in more ways than one. They are living the organism that means they eat and they create a waste product. These wastes often create an acidic environment that destroys your white teeth and damage your gums.
Sticky candies like caramels get into the crevices and the gum lines which makes it harder to clean and easier for bacteria and acidic environment to flourish.
Hard candies add element of damage to the teeth enamel.
Sweet drinks with high fructose corn syrup and sodas work in the same way, and they may be even worse since we have a tendency to sip them continuously.
Brushing and flossing after eating helps. However, who is going to brush several times a day to match snacking habits.
A healthy smile takes work and your direct participation.
Great Snack Choices
It doesn’t make sense to say don’t do this or don’t do that. To make life style choices your need to find replacement. Snacking is the same way.
You have choices that keep your teeth and gum healthy. Not to mention the rest of your body.
Vegetables are on top fo the list followed by mildly sweet fruits. Preparation is the key. Developing the habit to have these healthy snacks around helps you reach for them.
The fiber content of vegetables and fruits like carrots and apples satisfies for much longer than sweet processed sugar in candies. The process of chewing vegetables and fruits like carrots and apples by itself cleans your teeth and strengthens your gum.
Many dentists also believe that t sugar-free gums may help you keep your teeth cleaner by removing some of the plaque and debris during chewing. Some believe that act of chewing a gum helps them curb their appetite so that they can avoid snacks.
Fruits and vegetables are also loaded with vitamins and minerals that our diet lacks.
It takes your interest, direct participation, and a little experimenting to find out which fruits and vegetables work for you.
Remember that you still need to brush and floss your teeth even with healthy snacks. Even fruits and vegetables release some acid that may be harmful to your teeth and gum if, not cleaned.