The Smile Daily

With the holidays fast approaching, you might be wondering how you can keep your teeth healthy and white without having to hide from pictures or give up the once a year Christmas candy. The team here at Norge has your back, and we’re here to help!

We’re sharing some best practices for oral health during the holidays. Around this time of year, your teeth could use some extra love. Here are a few items to consider during the festivities:

Careful with Candy

While delicious, Christmas candy can be harmful to your teeth in more ways than one. Hard candy could easily crack your teeth, possibly leaving you in pain or with pressure/temperature sensitivity. On the other side of the spectrum, candy that’s really sticky could remove dental work such as crowns or fillings, and it’s very difficult to remove from your teeth. The best defense is to be careful and limit your intake of these common culprits of dental damage.

Limiting your intake of sugars can also save you trips to the dentist for fillings later on. Eating large amounts of candy/other sugary foods is one of the main reasons that children are more likely to require fillings. Cutting back on sugars, eating healthy meals and visiting the dentist on a regular basis are the recommended ways to help prevent cavities from forming.

A Quick Trick to Prevent Teeth from Staining

If you have a glass of red wine during the holiday festivities, make sure that you swish water around in your mouth after you’re done to help prevent staining. Along with coffee, red wine is notorious for staining your teeth and can leave your smile less than brilliant after repeated exposure to acidic dark drinks like red wine.

Because your teeth have a porous surface, the pigments from the wine can settle into the small cracks of your teeth leading to potentially stained teeth. We’re not saying that you have to avoid red wine - and in fact, there are articles all over the internet that indicate that drinking red wine has numerous health benefits. You’ve probably even heard one of those benefits from a family member or friend.

Proactively Whitening Teeth

During this time of year, you might want to take an extra step to ensure that your smile is the brightest it can be. One of the ways you can do this effectively is through at-home teeth whitening provided by your dentist. While easily accessible during your grocery trips, over-the-counter teeth whitening products don’t perform as well as the ones you’ll find at your dentist’s office, so don’t be afraid to ask us.

When you book an in-house whitening appointment at Norge Dental Center, we can share options and even provide you with custom-fit trays and whitening gel that you can use at home. To schedule your appointment to talk about teeth whitening, call us at 757-941-7682.

We’re wrapping up another year at Norge Dental Center, and want to wish each of our patients a joyous holiday season full of good times with your family and friends. If you haven’t booked your (or your family’s) exams/cleanings for 2020 yet, give us a call today to secure your dates and stay ahead of the game. Cheers to starting the New Year off on the right foot!