The Role Of Nutrition In Healthy Tooth And Gum Care
A confident and beautiful smile can signal many good things about our health. Healthy teeth and gums, which make your smile attractive, play important roles in many areas, from our digestive system to mental health. So, your oral health can be both the reason and result of your overall health.
As you might assume, following regular dental examinations and daily dental cleaning routines are very important for our oral and dental health. However, in addition to these factors, our eating habits also play an important role in our oral and dental health.
Knowing the effect of nutrition on our oral and dental health, and providing ourselves with the ideal eating and drinking habits can protect us from many oral and dental problems. In this article, we will shed light on the role of nutrition in having healthy teeth and gums.
What Is The Relationship Between Nutrition And Dental Health?
We take many vitamins and minerals into our body through nutrition. Some of them, such as calcium, phosphorus, and fluoride, are minerals that make up the tooth structure. Adequate amounts of these minerals make our teeth resistant to decay and wear. Therefore, foods that will strengthen the tooth structure contribute to our dental health remarkably.
On the other hand, we can also damage our teeth through food. For example, the sugar and acid in some foods can weaken tooth enamel and cause discoloration or tooth decay. Therefore, we can classify some foods as beneficial for dental health and others as harmful.
What Are Beneficial Foods for Dental Health?
Some food and drinks that can be beneficial for our oral and dental health are as follows:
- Dairy products: Dairy products such as milk, cheese, and yogurt contain high levels of calcium, which strengthens the structure of the teeth and protects us against cavities.
- Dark green leafy vegetables: Vegetables such as broccoli, cabbage, and spinach provide us with some minerals and vitamins in addition to the calcium they contain. So, vegetables are great for our dental health.
- Nuts (walnuts, almonds, etc.): These foods are rich in phosphorus and calcium, which add strength to our teeth. They also contain antioxidants fighting against potential gum diseases.
What Are Harmful Foods For Dental Health?
Some food and drinks that can be harmful for our oral and dental health are as follows:
- Acidic foods and drinks: Cola and other carbonated drinks, some fruits, and fruit juices can damage tooth enamel and cause cavities.
- Sugary foods and drinks: Sugar is bad for our dental health. It plays an important role in the formation and development of the bacterial environment in the mouth. With the proliferation of bacteria, the acidity in the mouth increases and tooth enamel weakens. As a result, tooth decay starts.
- Sticky foods: Chocolate, candy, and some cookies can stay on the surface of the teeth, and stay in the mouth longer, creating a rich environment for bacteria to feed. Therefore, the acidic environment grows and tooth decay can occur.
Nutrition Recommendations For Healthy Teeth And Gums
You can take note of the following nutritional recommendations for the health of your teeth:
Regular And Balanced Diet:
By following a regular and balanced diet, we can get the vitamins and minerals our body and teeth need and have a stronger and healthier tooth structure. The contribution of nutrition to our teeth is not limited to the strengthening of tooth enamel and internal structure. With a balanced diet, we are protected from gum diseases and our general oral hygiene improves with increased saliva production.
Calcium And Vitamin D:
We know that many vitamins and minerals benefit our teeth, gums, or oral health in general. However, calcium and vitamin D are a bit more interesting. As mentioned above, calcium is an important building block of our teeth. Vitamin D helps us absorb the calcium we get from food. Therefore, we can think of calcium and vitamin D together to boost the benefit of these nutrients.
Avoid Sugary And Acidic Drinks:
Sugary and acidic drinks are the biggest enemies of tooth enamel. Acidic drinks cause tooth enamel erosion, tooth sensitivity, tooth discoloration, and subsequent tooth decay. Sugary drinks allow bacteria to multiply rapidly. Rapidly multiplying bacteria ferment more sugar and produce more acid. Thus, sugary drinks end up being as harmful as acidic drinks.
Eat Fruits And Vegetables As Snacks:
Relatively hard fruits such as apples and carrots need to be chewed thoroughly in the mouth before swallowing. This chewing process requires a lot of salivation. An ample amount of saliva production is very beneficial for our oral hygiene. With such touches on our oral hygiene, we can make a great contribution to our oral and dental health.
In this article, we have seen that regular visits to the dentist are not enough for healthy teeth and gums, we should also review our lifestyle and eating and drinking habits. We also learned that some foods are beneficial and some are harmful to our oral and dental health with some examples. In addition to all these, we should not forget that dental health should be considered as a whole and we should not hesitate to seek professional help in this regard.
As Melsadent Oral and Dental Health Polyclinic, we serve our patients with all kinds of oral and dental health issues you can think of, from dental implants to dental cleaning, from orthodontic treatments to prosthetic solutions in Tuzla, Istanbul. The treatments we offer with our expert staff and the most advanced technology are now more effective, more personalized, and more comfortable.
In addition to the services we provide at Melsadent, we hope that our patients will be responsible for their oral and dental health in their daily lives. If you are not sure about how to maintain a good diet for healthy teeth, we invite you to our clinic to get expert advice and ask your questions about eating habits and daily dental care.
