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Want to make Halloween a bit less frightening? Just a bit less, mind you! After all, Halloween wouldn’t be Halloween without ghosts, witches, skeletons, and the whole ghoulish crew.

But while the eerily unexpected is half the fun of Halloween in Crescent Springs, unexpected dental problems are no fun at all. That’s why we’ve come up with some fiendishly clever ideas to help you enjoy Halloween treats without tricky consequences.

Beware These Bites

You don’t need a crystal ball to decide which treats are the most sinister for your dental health—hard, sticky, and sour candies are frightful choices for good reasons.

• Hard candies, jawbreakers, lollipops, candied apples, and other candies with hard surfaces take a long time to dissolve in your mouth, exposing your teeth to sugar over a longer period. Even worse, you may be tempted to bite down on them, which can lead to chipped and cracked teeth.
• Sticky and chewy candies like gummies, candy corn, jellybeans, caramels, and fruit chews stick to your enamel and between your teeth, again exposing your teeth to more sugar over a longer period.
• Sour candies, whether they take the form of hard candy, gummies, chews, or straws, are especially bad for your enamel. Candies are sour because of their acidity, and acids erode enamel strength. Weak spots on the tooth surface are the first stage of cavity development.

Avoid Unnerving Orthodontic Events

If you wear braces, eating the wrong treats can come back to haunt you. Chewy foods can pull a bracket right off your tooth. Hard and crunchy foods break wires and brackets. Sticky foods pull on your braces and can be hard to brush away.

Damaged braces mean extra trips to the orthodontist for repair, and can even delay your treatment if the damage is significant and you can’t see your orthodontist right away. Eek!

Instead, talk to Dr. Pohl about which foods are safe options. Treats like peanut butter cups, mint patties, soft chocolate bars without nuts, and other braces-friendly options will let you enjoy a sweet Halloween night without braces-frightful consequences.

If you wear aligners, always remove your aligners whenever you eat to protect them from warping, cracking, bending, and staining. If you go out, remember to bring your protective case. The night’s no fun if your aligners have *disappeared* at the end of the evening.

And don’t let the time get away from you! Most aligners need to be worn 20-22 hours each day. While you won’t turn into a pumpkin if you party too long without your aligners, you could delay your orthodontic progress if you don’t get your scheduled hours in regularly.

Timely Treating

We can’t wave a wand to vanish cavities, so prevention is key. When you enjoy holiday treats (or any desserts), it’s good idea to eat them in moderation and with a meal. This way, your teeth are exposed to sugars and acids over a limited period. And, as you eat, saliva production increases, which helps neutralize destructive acids and wash away food particles before they can harm your enamel.

Water Works Like Magic!

Water has many bewitching qualities.

• Healthy hydration supports healthy oral tissues and saliva production.
• Water contains no sugars or acids which can damage enamel.
• Drinking water is a great choice if you wear braces, because water helps wash food particles from brackets and wires when you can’t brush.
• Water is the only good beverage choice if you’re wearing aligners. Sugary and acidic beverages which collect in your trays bathe your teeth in those sugars and acids. Some darker drinks can stain your aligners—and your teeth!

Vanishing Food Particles and Plaque

Halloween is meant to be extra. And brushing and flossing are extra important this time of year to make sticky, sugary food particles and plaque disappear ASAP.

Make sure you brush for two minutes at least twice each day and floss once a day to prevent extra Halloween sugars from lurking around your teeth and gums. In fact, it’s a good idea to brush soon after any sugary treat to deprive cavity-causing bacteria of their favorite source of nourishment.

Proactive dental care isn’t magic. Communication and effort are all it takes! Talk to your dental team at Buttermilk Dentistry about the best way to celebrate Halloween without conjuring up problems for your teeth and gums. And when you’re out sharing your holiday spirit, don’t forget to treat your friends to your boo-tiful, healthy smile!

Rumor has it that the Queen of England doesn’t allow garlic in the palace. And, even if you have no royal duties in the near future, it might be a good idea to avoid foods like garlic and onion before a big presentation or a first date. But if your diet is filled with mint, fresh apples, and parsley and you still worry about your breath, here are some common causes for bad breath that you might not have considered.

• A Slip of the Tongue

We brush and floss to remove food particles and bacteria. After all, bacteria that linger in the mouth produce acids that damage tooth enamel and cause bad breath. But there is one important brushing target you might be overlooking—your tongue.

Remove food particles and bacteria on the surface of the tongue with a gentle brushing after you have finished cleaning your teeth. With a dab of toothpaste, brush the top of your tongue gently from back to front. There are also tools called tongue scrapers available that are specifically designed to remove food particles and bacteria from the tongue’s surface. However you choose to clean your tongue, remember to move from the back to the front, and always clean gently.

• A Dry Spell

We spend the vast majority of our day not brushing our teeth. What helps keep breath fresh even during the hours between brushings? Saliva! As saliva bathes the teeth throughout the day, it not only washes away food particles and bacteria, but also neutralizes the enamel-damaging acids that are produced by bacteria. Yet another benefit? Saliva is not a friendly environment for the oral bacteria that produce volatile sulfur compounds (VSCs). It is these compounds that cause most of the unpleasant odors we know as bad breath.

If you are drinking the recommended amount of water each day, you are helping your body produce saliva and fight bad breath. Sometimes, a medical condition called dry mouth, or xerostomia, interferes with saliva production. Talk to Dr. Pohl about ways to deal with dry mouth. Solutions as simple as drinking more fluids or chewing sugarless gum can help, or we can suggest over-the-counter products or prescription medications if needed.

• A Bad Night’s Sleep

We’re all familiar with the concept of morning breath. As we sleep, our saliva production naturally decreases. It’s like a nightly version of dry mouth. Without normal levels of saliva, bacterial growth takes off, VSC’s are produced in greater quantities, and we wake up wondering what on earth happened to that fresh feeling we had after brushing the night before.

Unfortunately for snorers, nighttime brings more problems. Snoring leads to mouth breathing, and mouth breathing creates an even drier environment where oral bacteria increase more quickly. If you find you are consistently waking up with an especially unpleasant case of morning breath, you could be a chronic snorer without even realizing it. If you discover or suspect you have a snoring problem, talk to Dr. Pohl or your GP. Snoring can have serious health consequences, so let’s discuss possible solutions.

One important note to end on: if you have eliminated all the obvious causes of halitosis but still have persistent bad breath, give our Crescent Springs office a call. Chronic bad breath can be a symptom of serious gum disease, oral infections, illnesses such as diabetes or kidney disease, and other medical conditions that should be treated as soon as possible. If the topic is bad breath, let’s make sure garlic is the only thing you have to worry about.

At Buttermilk Dentistry, we know the human mouth contains a lot of bacteria. A bacterium can travel through your body with routine activities that are a normal part of daily living. You spread bacteria when you brush or floss your teeth, when you chew, and when you swallow.

For most people, bacteria don’t cause any problem. For some people, however, especially those who have chronic medical conditions, specific cardiac conditions, or whose immune systems are compromised, bacteria that spreads throughout the bloodstream can lead to much more serious bacterial infections.

The goal of pre-medication or antibiotic prophylaxis, Dr. Pohl will tell you, is to prevent bacterial endocarditis, a serious infection of the endothelial heart surfaces or the heart valves. The condition is also called infective endocarditis. A small population of people with certain health problems has a high risk for contracting this potentially deadly bacterium.

The American Heart Association states that people at greatest risk for contracting bacterial or infective endocarditis are:

• Patients who underwent cardiac valve surgery in the past
• Those who have suffered past incidents of infective endocarditis
• Patients who have mitral valve prolapse, resulting in or causing valve leakage
• People who have had rheumatic fever or any degenerative cardiac condition that produces abnormalities in cardiac valves
• Patients who suffer from certain congenital heart diseases

For these patients, any dental procedure may cause bleeding, and prophylactic antibiotic administration is recommended as a preventive measure.

Other patients who require prophylactic antibiotics

The American Association of Endodontists extends recommendations to patients who have undergone joint replacement surgery within the past two years, suffer from type 1 diabetes, or have immune deficiencies from diseases such as lupus, rheumatoid arthritis, or HIV; cancer patients whose immune systems are suppressed because of radiation or chemotherapy; people who have had organ transplants; and hemophiliacs.

The American Academy of Pediatric Dentistry also includes people who suffer from sickle cell anemia, as well as patients who suffer from conditions that require chronic steroid therapy.

Typical endodontic procedures for which antibiotic prophylaxis is recommended include root canal therapy (when it involves going deeper than the root apex), surgical tooth extractions, and any other dental, endodontic, or periodontal procedure during which the doctor anticipates bleeding.

Although different medical societies and organizations offer these guidelines as a way of identifying patients for whom prophylactic pre-medication is essential prior to dental procedures, dentists will take each patient's medical history and personal risk factors into consideration. Some doctors may choose to administer antibiotics following a procedure, especially for patients who have previously suffered from oral infections either as a result of dental procedures or that necessitated oral surgery.

For more information about antibiotic prophylaxis, or to schedule an appointment with Dr. Pohl, please give us a call at our convenient Crescent Springs office!

October’s here! A month when we celebrate the beauty of fall, the taste of pumpkin spice, the fun of Halloween in Crescent Springs, and the healthy smiles which orthodontic treatment makes possible!

Because October is Orthodontic Health Month, and it’s a great time to talk about how your orthodontist helps you create not just a more beautiful smile, but a healthier one. 

Straight, evenly spaced teeth are the visible benefit of treatment, but there are many health benefits which might not be quite as noticeable. Orthodontic treatment can:

• Help You Prevent Cavities and Gum Disease 

When teeth are crowded or crooked, it’s hard for your toothbrush and floss to reach all of the plaque which builds up on and between your teeth. The bacteria in plaque create acids which start to dissolve tooth enamel. And a very small hole in the enamel surface can grow until it becomes a cavity. 

Plaque and bacteria also irritate the gums. When you can’t remove plaque completely, your gums are at risk for gingivitis. This early stage of gum disease causes redness, tenderness, swelling, and bleeding. Left untreated, gingivitis can develop into more serious gum disease. 

And, over time, plaque hardens and becomes tartar, which needs to be removed professionally at Buttermilk Dentistry.

When your teeth are straight and evenly spaced, brushing and flossing are both easier and more effective, helping you keep your teeth and gums healthy and plaque-free.

• Create a Better Bite

For a healthy bite, your teeth and jaws need to align correctly. The top teeth should slightly overlap the lower teeth, and the ridges of your upper molars should fit smoothly with the grooves of your lower molars. 

Malocclusions, or bad bites, can come in many forms, including overbites, underbites, open bites, cross bites, and overjets. A bad bite is bad for your dental health. Malocclusions can cause tooth grinding, worn enamel, and even cracked teeth. 

And bad bites don’t just affect your teeth. When your bite doesn’t align properly, you might suffer from problems such as headaches, jaw pain, indigestion, and sleep apnea. 

Orthodontic treatment creates a healthy, symmetrical, and pain-free bite.

• Improve Your Self-Confidence

We can’t forget the invisible health benefits of orthodontic treatment! Your smile is a gift which you share with the world. But if you’re hesitating to smile because of self-consciousness about your teeth or bite, orthodontic treatment can make a world of difference.

Your orthodontist can help you achieve straighter teeth, a bite which fits together properly, and, when malocclusions affect jaw symmetry, a more balanced facial profile. If you’re concerned about the appearance of your smile, talk to Dr. Pohl about an orthodontic consultation. Today’s technology can even let you see what your future smile will look like!

Modern orthodontic treatment is more effective and takes less time to complete than ever before. And orthodontics offers patients of all ages more benefits than ever before: 

• New types of braces are less noticeable and more comfortable than older styles. Smaller brackets, brackets which blend with tooth enamel, clear aligners, and lingual braces give you a variety of options to customize your treatment.
• Early orthodontic treatment can guide jaw growth in younger children. 
• Appliances can help with jaw alignment in older children, or, for more serious malocclusions, an orthodontist can coordinate treatment with an oral surgeon.
• Treatment isn’t limited to the teen years. Adults make up a large and growing number of orthodontic patients. 

If you’ve been considering orthodontic treatment, October—or any month!—is a great time to schedule a visit with an orthodontist. An orthodontic evaluation will let you know just what your orthodontist can do to help you create a beautiful and healthy smile.