4 great New Year’s resolutions for your teeth in 2023
It’s a brand new year – but it doesn’t necessarily have to be a brand new you. That’s the thing that lots of people often get wrong about New Year’s resolutions – trying to change too much, too quickly, means that it can be hard to maintain the motivation, making it far too easy to just let everything fall by the wayside.
Achieving success with New Year’s Resolutions are all about giving yourself time and space. If you’ve got one major resolution, give yourself time to pick it up gradually, and then it’s much more likely to stick than it would if it were a sudden, dramatic life change. Similarly, if you’re tackling several at once, then it’s generally a good idea to do them one at a time – give it time to bed in before moving on to the next one.
And if you started this year without a firm resolution… well, as experts in dental treatments here at AP Smilecare, we’ve got a few ideas for you!
Floss every day
Put simply, daily flossing helps prevent gum disease. Now, you don’t need to be told about the importance of brushing twice a day, but actually that’s only a bare minimum – brushing alone isn’t capable of getting all the leftover food that accumulates in between your teeth throughout the day. The bacteria in your mouth can use these food particles for energy, creating acid and toxins as a by-product, which can ultimately contribute to gum disease if left alone long enough.
Flossing between your teeth helps get rid of these food particles, protecting you from gum disease. For maximum effectiveness it’s best to do it daily – ideally in the evening. (Incidentally, it’s also worth us mentioning that the NHS and Oral Health Foundation recommend changing toothbrushes every three months.)
Cut down on alcohol
This is a common resolution for lots of people, and you may even be halfway through Dry January yourself. But it’s also not uncommon for people to finish Dry January and then return to their normal alcohol intake afterwards. What’s actually better for your health is a more gradual but permanent reduction of your alcohol intake. Not only is that better for your general health, but specifically for your teeth, as alcohol can contain a lot of sugar – especially drinks like wines, ciders and liqueurs.
Stop smoking
This is another one that’s bad for your overall health, but specifically for your teeth. Tobacco is a particularly bad culprit for staining your teeth, mostly due to the tar and nicotine that cigarettes contain. That can cause them to become yellow or brown, especially if you smoke several cigarettes a day. It’s no wonder we get so many ex-smokers enquiring about our teeth whitening procedures here at AP Smilecare.
It can also cause gum disease – smoking tobacco results in a lack of oxygen in your bloodstream, which prevents any infected gums from being able to heal. Gum disease is not to be underestimated either, as it’s the leading cause of tooth loss in adults.
Stop snacking between meals
The dangers of smoking are pretty obvious, but the dangers of snacking… well, they’re a little bit more opaque. We won’t get too deeply into an intensive biology lesson, but essentially too much snacking can lead to a build-up of excessive plaque in your mouth. That’s largely due to the bacteria we mentioned above. To briefly reiterate, when they feed off leftover food and drink in your mouth, they produce acid as a by-product. This process means your mouth gets more acidic every time you eat something containing large amounts of sugar or carbohydrates, and it can take up to an hour for your pH levels to return to normal.
Snacking continuously throughout the day doesn’t give you a chance to properly recover, which means that your mouth will remain acidic for a longer period of time. That acid can end up attacking your tooth enamel, increasing your vulnerability to tooth decay.
Those are just a couple of our suggestions, of course. Depending on what you have planned for the year, you might have a few of your own! And if you’re ready for a complete change in 2023, we even offer a complete smile makeover service here at AP Smilecare, alongside a diverse range of other dental treatments. To find out more, feel free to give our Blackburn dental clinic a call on 01254 297 000, or simply pop by in person. We’re always happy to see you!