As a parent, you take your job seriously. You are always looking for ways to help your kids stay healthy. That’s why you know to make sure your children brush their teeth so often.
That’s also why you probably limit how much sugar and candy your kids enjoy. But there are other ways your kids can hurt their teeth. There are also sources of sugar in their diet that you might not be aware of.
Call our Winnipeg, MB dental office today at 204-977-8515 and schedule a new appointment. Our dentists can see children as young as one year old. Regular dental visits can help protect teeth.
How You Can Help Keep Your Family’s Teeth Healthy
But what can you do to help at home? Here are a few tips to help keep your children’s smiles healthy. Of course, these are just tips and do not replace regular brushing, flossing, and dental checkups.
- Offer water to drink more often than not. It’s free from sugar, and it helps wash away food particles.
- Limit sugar and desserts to occasional treats.
- Brush twice each day and floss once each night.
- If your kids are active, consider getting them an athletic mouthguard.
Common Drinks That Could Hurt Teeth
By know, you likely know how bad a can of regular, sugary pop can be for teeth. That’s because of all that sugar. The harmful bacteria behind cavities and gum disease thrive on sugar, increasing the chances of you having those dental problems.
Pop is not the only drink you need to worry about, though. Here are four other drinks that could hurt your kids’ teeth.
FRUIT JUICES
It’s true that fruit juice normally has many vitamins in it, so it can be healthy for your body as a whole. However, fruit juice as two qualities that can cause damage to your family’s teeth.
First, they have a lot of sugar in them. Even all-natural, unsweetened fruit juice will have sugar in it. When you drink juice, you’re coating your teeth and gums in that liquid sugar. This will feed the harmful bacteria.
Second, they also have high acidity. This acid is not the same as what harmful bacteria produce, but it will still slowly erode the enamel on your kids’ teeth.
TEA AND COFFEE DRINKS
How these affect your teeth depends on how you take it. Plain tea and coffee (meaning without sugar or cream) are normally dark enough to leave tiny stains behind on your teeth. Keep drinking either long enough, and your white teeth will start to look dull and darker.
Tea and coffee are also highly acidic. As with fruit juices, this can erode and weaken your kids’ enamel.
But it’s the sugar that normally goes into tea and coffee drinks that makes it tough. A can of soda often has 39 grams of sugar. That large double double normally has 34 grams of sugar. As you can see, the two drinks are almost as bad for your family’s teeth due to the sugar content.
ENERGY DRINKS
You might not let your younger kids enjoy energy drinks, but teens might like these. However, be careful and read the label of these energy drinks. Some have close to or even around the same amount of sugar as a can of regular pop.
SPORTS DRINKS
While some can have sugar, most sports drinks do not. Then what’s the problem? Most sports drinks are full of carbohydrates. They’re designed to revitalize you and let you stay active. Unfortunately, carbohydrates are very similar to sugar as far as harmful bacteria are concerned. They can thrive on both, increasing your risk of gum disease and tooth decay.
DIET POP
Many people think diet pop is great for your dental health because it usually has no sugar in it. That part is true. If sugar feeds the harmful bacteria behind tooth decay and gum disease, limiting the sugar in your diet will help. However, most pop is full of acid. Again, that acid can erode your enamel over time.
Call Lakewood Dental Centre today at 204-977-8515 or use our online form to make a new appointment for your whole family (or at least anyone older than one year old).
When Jason came to Lakewood Dental Centre, our dental professionals noticed the wear and tear on his enamel. Like many people, Jason would grind his teeth in his sleep.
Teeth grinding, also known as bruxism, can contribute to temporomandibular joint disorders, headaches, and jaw pain. By getting a night guard, Jason was able to sleep comfortably and protect his teeth at the same time.
Our dentists would like to help if you may be affected by a similar issue. You can call 204-977-8515 or contact us online to book an appointment at our dentist office in Winnipeg.
According to the Canadian Dental Association, 7 out of every 10 Canadians will develop gum disease during their lives. Nevertheless, you can take action to reduce your risk of gum disease.
Today, we will discuss some of the things you can do to help prevent gum disease as well as some things that can be done to treat it.One option for treatment isnon-surgical gum therapyat Lakewood Dental Centre in Winnipeg.
If you have more questions or you want to make an appointment, you can contact us online or by calling 204-977-8515.
Preventing Gum Disease
The best approach to most illnesses is prevention. Gum disease, or periodontal disease, is no different. More than likely, you already know the things that you should be doing to prevent this kind of infection, but it never hurts to review the basics.
Every day, you should do two things as part of your daily oral hygiene routine — brushing your teeth and flossing between your teeth and gums.
You should brush your teeth twice daily. When you do it’s important to scrub every tooth on all sides, and you should pay particular attention to the areas where your teeth and gums meet. You also can use the tip of your brush to clean behind your upper and lower front teeth.
You should floss at least once per day. Flossing helps to remove plaque and food particles from between your teeth and gums.
When you are flossing, you will want a piece of floss that is about 18 inches long. To start, you can wrap the ends of the floss around your middle fingers. As you floss, you should wrap the dental floss around each tooth in a C-shape. Wipe the floss from the base of the tooth to the tip a couple times.
You will want to use a clean piece of floss on each tooth. You can do this by wrapping and unwrapping the floss as you move between teeth.
Plaque is a sticky film that can form daily. If it isn’t removed, it can harden to become calculus, a.k.a. tartar. Bacterial infection is more likely at the point where attaches to your gums. This can lead to gingivitis, which is an early form of gum disease.
As part of your preventive care, you also should visit your dentist a couple times each year for professional dental cleanings and exams. This will allow a dental professional to remove plaque and tartar that you may have missed. It also will give him or her a chance to check for signs of gum disease. Early detection can help your treatment be more effective.
If you have questions about gum disease, our staff at Lakewood Dental Centre will be happy to give you answers. Call us at 204-977-8515.
Non-Surgical Gum Therapy
Gum disease can affect anyone at any age, which is why we encourage everyone in your family to practice good oral hygiene.
Nevertheless, we want you to be aware of what to watch for in case you should develop gingivitis. The symptoms of this form of gum disease include gums that look red or puffy. You also may notice bleeding when you brush or floss.
If the infection spreads, you may have pockets form in your gum tissue. Without treatment, the infection could lead to tooth loss as more of your gum tissue is damaged.
Your dentist wants you to keep as many of your teeth as you can for as long as possible. This is part of the reason we encourage you to visit the dentist a couple times a year for cleanings and examinations.
If you should have gum disease, your dentist may recommend non-surgical gum therapy. This may include curettage and root planing. Curettage is the removal of infected gum tissue. Root planing involves removing tartar and smoothing the surface of the roots of your teeth.
Many times, this is enough to remove the infection from your mouth. After these procedures, a dental professional will instruct you on what you should do to take care of your gums.
In more serious cases, however, non-surgical gum therapy may not be enough. If needed, you may be referred to a periodontist. That is a dentist who has special training in the treatment of gum disease.
While we hope you never have gum disease, we also want you to know that the dentists at our Winnipeg office will do everything we can do treat it.
Keep Your Gums Healthy
Remember that preventive care is the best approach to dealing with periodontal disease. Brush and floss every day, and visit the dentist for regular cleanings and examinations.
To make an appointment at Lakewood Dental Centre, call 204-977-8515 or fill out our online form.
We love to see our patients smiling, and that’s why we hope all the athletes in your family wear athletic mouthguards when you are participating in any sport that involves a lot of contact, running, or jumping.
The Canadian Dental Hygienists Association has pointed out that the cost of a custom fitted athletic mouthguard is minimal when compared to the $5,000 to $10,000 in lifetime expenses for treating a lost tooth. We think you will agree that an athletic mouthguard is a good investment in your smile.
You can get a mouthguard at Lakewood Dental Centre. Our dentist office is located in Winnipeg, MB. Make your appointment by calling 204-977-8515 or by filling out our online form.
Would you like to change something about your smile? If so, then you have plenty of company. There’s a reason so many dentists offer cosmetic dentistry for their patients.
That includes our dentists in Winnipeg at Lakewood Dental Centre. If you would like to know how you could have whiter, straighter teeth or how you could repair chipped and worn down teeth, we would be happy to help.
Just contact us online or call 204-977-8515 to set up a consultation.
Would you like to straighten your teeth and improve your smile? Whether you are ateenager or an adult, orthodontic treatment is an option to improve the alignment of your teeth.
With braces or Invisalign®, you can fix bite issues, close gaps between your teeth, and move crooked and crowded teeth into parallel positions. Our Winnipeg dentist can explain the differences between your orthodontic options, too.
Call 204-977-8515 if you would like to schedule a consultation at Lakewood Dental Centre. You also can use our online form to request an appointment.
In the video below, you can listen to Lea describe how braces helped her.
Edentulism is a technical word for being toothless. No one wants to lose any teeth, much less all their teeth. Even so, we have ways of replacing lost teeth in modern dentistry.
Dentures are a common teeth replacement, but did you know that there are multiple kinds of dentures? That is the focus of today’s post.
You also can learn more about dentures by making an appointment with either of the dentists at our office in Winnipeg. If you would like to contact Lakewood Dental Centre, please call 204-977-8515 or fill out our online appointment form.
➤ Conventional Full Dentures
These dentures are made to fit on the outside of the gums. Full dentures are made to replace a complete arch of teeth.
Patients who have had teeth removed will not get their conventional dentures until their mouths have healed from an extraction procedure. You may use a denture adhesive with conventional dentures to help keep them more secure temporarily.
➤ Immediate Full Dentures
These are similar to conventional dentures. The difference is that immediate dentures are intended to be placed in your mouth on the same day teeth are removed.
Immediate full dentures are created before the extraction procedure. As a result, you can leave the dentist office that same day with a complete set of replacement teeth.
➤ Partial Dentures
As the name suggests, these dentures are meant to replace some teeth in an arch. These may be designed to connect to remaining healthy teeth. Partial dentures may be recommended as an alternative to dental bridges in some cases.
➤ Implant Supported Dentures
To better explain this kind of dentures, we need to start with the foundation. That is to say, we need to discuss dental implants.
Modern dental implants were developing by Dr. Per-Ingvar Brånemark, a Swedish physician. Dr. Brånemark learned that titanium would bond to bone based on a somewhat accidental discovery while he was researching blood circulation in rabbits.
He used the knowledge to develop modern dental implants, which were placed into a human patient’s mouth for the first time in the mid-1960s. Implants replace the roots of extracted, lost, or missing teeth.
A series of dental implants can be used to support a set of dentures. Thus, the name “implant supported dentures.” These also may be called overdentures, since these dentures go over your dental implants. (In some cases, overdentures may be placed over natural teeth as well.
Comparing The Kinds Of Dentures
For the sake of simplicity, we will focus on conventional dentures and dental implant supported dentures. While immediate full dentures can be placed sooner, they do function similar to conventional dentures.
As we mentioned earlier, you may use an adhesive with conventional dentures to help hold them in place. Since these dentures rest on the outside of your gums, they can sometimes come loose or slip out of position.
While you can still eat many things with conventional dentures, you may find that some foods are more difficult — and maybe even too difficult — to bite or chew.
Dental implants are placed directly into your jawbone. This allows that to provide more stability and security for your overdentures.
The stability afforded by having dental implants can have other benefits as well. The connection to your jawbone can improve the force behind your bite. Many patients find that eating is easier with implant-supported dentures.
Dentures And Your Jaw
One of the drawbacks of conventional dentures is you don’t have that replacement for the roots of your teeth. This matters because it can affect the health of your jawbone.
When you have teeth, your roots press into your jawbone. That pressure encourages your jaw to created new bone tissue. The new tissue can replace older tissue, which is reabsorbed by the bone. This process helps the jaw stay healthy and strong.
Without roots or dental implants, your jawbone may not receive the pressure that signals the need to create new bone tissue. As a result, your jawbone may not make enough new tissue to replace the older tissue that is be reabsorbed. Over time, you can lose mass in your jaw. That can affect the shape of your mouth, which can affect the fit of your conventional dentures.
With implant supported dentures, you have a way to stimulate your jaw, so it will continue to make new tissue. This may prevent the deterioration of your jaw over time.
Do You Have Questions About Dentures?
Our dentists in Winnipeg can discuss the different types of dentures and help you determine which kind is or will be right for you.
To request a consultation at Lakewood Dental Centre, call 204-977-8515 or fill out our online contact form.
Every year, millions of Canadians miss out on dental services that then need due to dental anxiety and outright fear of the dentist. Our team at Lakewood Dental Centre wants you to know that it’s OK to feel anxious about coming to the dentist.
We also want you to know that sedation dentistry may be able to help you manage that anxiety. We have put together a short quiz to help you decide if you should learn more about dental sedation.
You also can contact our dentist office in Winnipeg, MB, if you have questions about nitrous oxide or oral conscious sedation. Call 204-977-8515 or use our online form to reach us.
Cosmetic dentistry allows us to make dramatic changes to the appearance of our teeth. And perhaps no service illustrates that more than dental veneers.
Dental veneers can be used to …
▸ … make teeth look straighter.
▸ … make teeth look whiter.
▸ … close gaps between teeth.
▸ … repair chipped and worn down teeth.
If you want to make a change to your smile, then you may want to learn more about dental veneers. If you live in or near Winnipeg, MB, the dentists at Lakewood Dental Centre would be happy to answer any questions you have about veneers or cosmetic dentistry.
You can contact by filling out our online form or by calling 204-977-8515.