Category: playtime dental

Dental Care during Pregnancy

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When a woman finds out that she is pregnant, she often finds her appointment book filled to the brim with an onslaught of doctors’ appointments. But often, women gloss over the importance of dental care during pregnancy. Read on to discover a few reasons why maintaining dental care during pregnancy is a good and healthy practice.
Avoid Pregnancy Complications Caused by Poor Dental Hygiene
Did you know that seeing a general dentist during your pregnancy can help you to avoid harmful birthing complications? According to the American Academy of Pediatric Dentistry (AAPD), there is new evidence that suggests that women with periodontal disease have an increased risk of preterm birth and low birth weight. In order to avoid these risks, it is important that a pregnant woman continues to maintain good dental health throughout her entire pregnancy.
After pregnancy, it is equally important that a mother regularly visits a general dentist. Mothers with poor oral health are at a greater risk of passing on cavity-causing bacteria to their young children. To avoid this, mothers and pregnant women should practice the following good oral hygiene rules:
  1. Maintain a proper diet. Dental health starts with a good, healthy diet that isn’t too high in cavity-causing sugars.
  2. Visit your dentist regularly. Seeing the dentist regularly will help your gums and teeth to stay in top-notch condition. A dentist will also help you to avoid and resolve oral diseases, such as cavities or the presence of harmful bacteria.
  3. Use a fluoridated toothpaste and mouthwash.
  4. Don’t forget to brush at least twice a day. While many dentists recommend brushing three times a day, sometimes that doesn’t happen during the busy months of pregnancy. Using mouthwash after eating is a good substitute during the day. But remember, teeth should be thoroughly brushed morning and night.
  5. Don’t share utensils with your infant children. Sharing utensils and food is one of the easiest ways that bacteria are spread from one person to another.

For more helpful tips about kids dental health and family dentistry, check out our FAQs at Playtime Dental.

Kids Dental Emergencies

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Dealing with children’s dental issues can sometimes create stress in a parent’s life. At a very early age, children learn that their teeth can hurt. Helping your children to not fear the dentist as a result of sometimes painful dental experiences is very important. If you can help your children establish at a young age good dental habits and healthy emotions toward their dental needs, you can help them create a lifelong experience of good dental health. Here are a few ways to handle some common dental emergencies that you and your kids may face.
Toothache
Do not overreact to your child’s toothache; however, it is also important not to ignore your child’s toothache. Sometimes a toothache can be caused by something as simple as food lodged between the teeth or beneath the gum line. Rinse your child’s teeth with warm water and thoroughly floss to make sure this isn’t the cause of the discomfort. If your child’s toothache will require a dental visit, be sure to comfort your child by providing reassurance that a visit to the dentist will be a pleasant experience and will help him or her feel better.
Chipped or Fractured Tooth
A chipped or fractured tooth is a common childhood dental injury due to most children’s high levels of activity. A chipped or fractured tooth can be very painful, so it is important to not underestimate your child’s level of pain following this type of injury. Your kid’s dentist should be contacted immediately, and you should follow the dentist’s instructions precisely. Quick action can sometimes ensure that the tooth can be repaired. A chipped tooth should not be ignored, because a severely chipped tooth can become infected.
Knocked Out Tooth

If your child sustains a serious injury resulting in a tooth being knocked out, you should first make sure that your child has not sustained any other more serious injuries, such as a blow to the head. If your child’s tooth was knocked out as a result of a more serious injury, take your child to the emergency room. Recover the tooth and take it with you to the hospital. If your child is not otherwise injured, recover the tooth and visit your general dentist as soon as possible.

Essential Foods for Healthy Teeth

Posted on by Playtime Dental
Although there are the basics of good oral hygiene such as brushing and flossing daily and twice-a-year dentist visits, our diet is also an essential part of the process. Nutrition is important for our entire body, and that includes our teeth and gums. It’s critical to not only have a healthy diet, but also to understand which foods in particular promote a healthy mouth.
But people should not only consider which foods to avoid such as sugary and starchy foods that bring plaque-causing bacteria and attack the teeth for up to 20 minutes after eating. They should also consider which foods specifically help their teeth.
Teeth-Healthy Foods
Any food products that are rich in both vitamin D and calcium help create healthy bones and teeth. These include milk, calcium-fortified juices, and other dairy products such as powdered milk.
Fruits and vegetables, the same foods doctors talk to their patients about, will also help individuals with their dental health. Brewer’s yeast and green leafy vegetables, for example, support cell growth and promote a healthy mouth through the folic acid they provide. Also cranberries should be eaten as part of a healthy diet because they interrupt oral bacteria from bonding to the tooth and prevent damage from plaque.
Cell damage and bacterial infection can be reduced by eating vegetables and fruit that contain vitamin C, antioxidants, and other nutrients.  Also, the fibrous nature of celery, carrots, apples and other raw vegetables and crisp fruits help clean plaque away mechanically as well as freshens the breath while eating.
Fight Cavities with Cheese
One food that many individuals are unaware helps to promote overall health is cheese. In addition to having calcium, essential for bone strength, certain characteristics have proven to interrupt the progress of cavities in the mouth. Further, specific types of cheese act as buffers to counteract the acids that attack teeth and also help clear the mouth of food debris by stimulating the flow of saliva. These cheeses include Monterey jack, mozzarella, Swiss, and aged parmesan.
In addition to the calcium contained in cheese, cheese also contains another vital element, phosphorous. These two elements in cheese support the mineralization of tooth enamel. Moreover, cheese also reduces and in some cases prevents pH level decreases of saliva.

Consuming these various foods can help teeth remain strong and can prevent dental diseases from forming.

Are Pacifiers a Kids’ Dental Problem?

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Here at Playtime Dental, our number one goal is to make sure your child’s mouth stays healthy. It’s never too early to start taking proper care of your child’s mouth, and if you have any questions about oral health, we are here to give you answers. One such question that you might have is, “are pacifiers a problem?” The answer to this concern is two-fold.

Problems with Long-Term Pacifier Use

For the first few years of your child’s life, using a pacifier usually won’t lead to any oral damage. On the other hand, if your child refuses to give up the pacifier, or if it is not taken away by the age of three, long-term suckling will definitely cause damage. This is especially true if your child is still suckling on a pacifier once he or she starts loosing baby teeth. Some of the negative effects endured from long-term pacifier use include:
·         The top front teeth will tip outward and/or not erupt correctly
·         The bottom front teeth will tip inward and/or not erupt correctly
·         The jaws can become misaligned causing bite problems
·         The permanent teeth will come in crooked.

Things to Remember

It’s very common for infants and young children to suck on pacifiers. If your child does, you need to make sure that the pacifier is constructed of one piece only. If it’s made of two or more parts, or the shield part of the pacifier is smaller than the mouth, it is a choking hazard.
Also, make sure that you don’t fasten the pacifier to a string and attach it to your child’s shirt. The string could get tangled or caught on something and injure your child.
Lastly, although you may have heard of dipping a pacifier into some type of sweet substance, such as honey, to calm your child when he or she is crying, you should avoid doing this because it can lead to tooth decay.

Contact Playtime Dental Today

Always do your best to provide positive reinforcement when trying to get your child to give up his or her pacifier. Also, make sure your child visits a general or kid’s dentist on a regular basis. The doctors here at Playtime Dental will be more than happy to evaluate your child’s oral health.

Kids’ Dental Tips for Busy Parents

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Keeping a child’s teeth in great shape is difficult for parents who have other children, jobs, and a home to maintain. There are tons of easy tips that can help keep your children’s teeth in great shape without taking too much time or effort. These quick tips can make a huge difference and can help make life as a busy parent that much easier.
  1. Switch to Water: Switching your child’s drinks from soft drinks and juices to water and sugar free drinks is the best way to help keep your child’s teeth clean. Though you cannot always ensure that your child will make these choices in their adult lives, you can help them make good choices at a young age.
  2. Offer Fewer Sugary Snacks: Though things like fruit snacks and candy may be a great way to make your child happy, they are often the cause of cavities, rotten teeth, and tooth pain. The average kids’ dentist recommends limiting sugar at an early age to cultivate good habits. If your child does have a sugary treat, have the child brush his or her teeth afterwards to remove sugar that may cause decay.
  3. Create a Bed-time Routine: Another great way to get your child’s teeth in great shape is to make up a bed time routine. This can help create consistency and can help get your child involved in their own dental health. This will make for a much easier process when it comes to getting your child’s teeth clean. Try encouraging them to brush their teeth while they sing their favorite song or while they watch a video. This can help make a great routine that they actually want to participate in.
  4. Get the Kids Involved: The last thing you may want to do is to get your child involved in their own dental health. Let them know how to take care of their own teeth, and let them know why they are brushing and flossing. This will help you to get your child involved and ready to help keep their own teeth clean. Dentist visits are a great place to learn about dental health.

Any of these tips can help get your child ready to take care of his or her own teeth. These tips can help your child create habits that are going to stay with them for years. Though it may seem impossible to juggle life and take care of your child’s teeth, with some help you can get them off to a great start.

Water Only in Sippy Cups

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Raising healthy kids these days is difficult, especially in a day and age when soft drinks, fast food, and fatty foods are the most common fare.  A few different ways exist to help get your kids off to a great start in both oral and overall health. One way is to put only water in sippy cups instead of juice. Switching to water in sippy cups with meals is the best way to ensure that baby teeth are healthy.
Though sippy cups are often filled with juice and sugary drinks, water is a great choice. Not only is water a better source of constant hydration, but it also protects the teeth from being continually coated in sugar and acid found in fruit juices. Fruit juice is high in natural sugar, which is just as hard on teeth as the refined sugars we use in baking.  Most children prefer sugary drinks due to the yummy flavors.  But when given nothing but water, it is far more likely that they will develop a taste for water and possibly a taste for healthier choices. Some parents claim that their children will not drink water. However, children are incredibly adaptive and when given water instead of sugary drinks, they will often choose what is easiest. Children are very versatile and will often drink whatever a parent gives them.  You may have a bit of fighting at first if your children are used to sugary drinks in their sippy cups.
Although switching their drinks to water is a great way to prevent cavities in baby teeth and adult teeth that are forming, dentist visits are still necessary for children. When it comes to the dental health of children, general dentist visits may be helpful but it is always better to go to a kids’ dentist. Visiting a kids’ dentist has a few different benefits. The first is that they know how to work with children. Dealing with children is different than dealing with adults. An experienced kids’ dentist will be practiced in a kid-friendly approach. The second is that little mouths and baby teeth require slightly different care than adult teeth. A kids’ dentist, like a pediatrician, is accustomed to these differences.

Yearly cleanings and checkups can help prevent any damage that may occur from improper care. Making sure that baby teeth are brushed, kept clean, and maintained is the best way to insure that the health of the growing adult teeth is as good as possible. In order for adult teeth to remain healthy as they grow, it is important that baby teeth are cared for properly. Switching children to water instead of juice or sugary drinks can help maintain the health of baby teeth to ensure that adult teeth get a healthy start.

Kids Dental Health: Vending Machines in Schools

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Obesity, bad eating habits, and unhealthy food choices do not necessarily originate at home. Parents are not always the ones influencing their children’s unhealthy dietary intake. It could be, perhaps, the vending machines at school. Children are tempted by the items they see inside the vending machines in their schools. The result of unhealthy or sugary snacks can impact kids’ dental health as well as their overall well-being.
It is hard for them to resist so many unhealthy snacks when they are exposed to them every single day. Children with a few dollars in their pockets are tempted with chocolate candy bars, greasy potato chips, and acid filled sodas. These foods fall in the category of non-nutritious snacks, because they offer little or no nutritional value.
Schools can influence their students’ diets if they consider putting healthier food choices in their vending machines. Apples, oranges, milk, juices, and even multi-grain fruit bars are better food choices. Foods such as these aid children and their parents in more than one way.
The Vending Machine and Its Impact on Children
Vending machines containing junk foods actually influence children to eat unhealthily. When children are hungry and want a quick snack, they have to settle for what they can get. The choices they have to choose from are the ones that the vending machines provide. Schools can control what goes into the vending machines, but only if they choose to do so.
Bad eating habits lead children to the kids’ dentist or to a general dentist office. Acidic drinks and sugary snacks destroy the tooth’s enamel and often lead to cavities and tooth decay. Parents spend hundreds, if not thousands, of dollars on dental care to restore their children’s teeth.
How Can Parents Help if Schools Will Not?

The voices of dissatisfied parents speak louder than vending machines. Parents can demand that their children’s school remove the vending machines or, at least, replace the foods inside with healthier foods. Parents can also forbid their children not to buy certain snacks from the vending machines. However, parents can also pack their children’s lunch, making sure to include nutritious snacks that will support overall health.

Oral Health Checklist for Teens

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As your child ages, especially during his or her teenage years, it will be your job to hand over the responsibility of taking care of your child’s teeth. This means it will be your child who has to make sure his or her teeth are brushed after every meal. Although there is quite a bit involved in properly taking care of one’s mouth, your teenager should not feel overwhelmed with dental hygiene. To make sure your child is doing all that he or she can, make sure you hang up an oral health checklist in your child’s bathroom as well as regularly visiting a kids’ dentist. The checklist should outline the following tips and it should be written as if it is talking directly to your teen.

·         Skip the chips and chocolate and eat an apple. Eating unhealthy foods is not only bad for your teeth, but it can be detrimental to your overall health.  Childhood obesity and diabetes are becoming more prevalent, so make sure you’re making healthy food choices.
·         Please buckle up in the car. Not only will wearing a seat belt help protect your mouth, it can also save your life if you’re in an accident.
·         Brush and floss after every meal.  Also consider chewing sugarless gum after each meal; this will help make your breath fresh, and it also helps to prevent tooth decay.  Did you know Xylitol, a sugar alcohol used in sugarless gum, actually kills the bacteria that cause decay! 
·         Do you have a game tonight? If so, make sure you pack your mouth guard, and more importantly, make sure you wear it during your game. You don’t want your permanent teeth getting knocked out do you? Wearing a mouth guard is one of the best things you can do to protect your teeth while playing sports.

·         Forget about getting your tongue pierced. You might think it looks cool, but as you age, you may come to realize it was just a phase you were going through.   Oral piercings can damage the teeth.  To have the best dental hygiene possible, you should skip over the oral piercings.

National Facial Protection Month

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National Facial Protection Month is coming close to an end. With the weather becoming warmer and the days lasting longer, your kiddos will be out and about playing and enjoying the outdoors.

Here at Playtime Dental, we want to make sure you are taking the extra steps needed to help protect your kids’ mouths and face. Although you can’t avoid accidents, you are able to do your best to make sure your child’s teeth and face are protected if an accident happens.

From organized sports to a pick-up game of kickball, here are some tips from the American Academy of Pediatric Dentistry to help protect your young ones pearly whites and face.

Wear a mouth guard when playing contact sports: Wearing a mouth guard can protect your teeth from accidental injuries to the face. Being proactive and having your child wear a mouth guard will be far less expensive than a possible tooth replacement.

Wear a helmet: Anytime your child is riding a bike, playing football, baseball and so on, wearing a helmet will not only protect your kids’ teeth but their skull as well.

Wear protective eyewear: Wearing protective eye gear can help avoid any injuries to your kids’ eyes.

Make protective gear mandatory for all sports: For organized sports, it is important to enforce facial protection. By doing so, severe facial injuries can be avoided.

For more questions, contact your child’s dentist or visit www.mychildrensteeth.org for more information.

Tips for Dental Emergency Prevention

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When it comes to taking care of your mouth, of course you know that brushing and flossing on a daily basis are two of the smartest things you can do. But what about dental emergencies? How are you supposed to go about preventing them? More importantly, how can you prevent dental emergencies from happening to your kids? Fortunately, there are many tips you can follow.

Tip #1: Visit a kids’ dentist.

The first and most important tip to follow is visiting a kids’ dentist on a regular basis. When you visit our office, you can rest assured that we will be able to both identify and properly treat any problems in your kids’ mouths.
Tip #2: Wear a mouth guard.
If your kids play sports, they need to wear mouth guards during their sporting events. Not only will a mouth guard help protect the teeth in your children’s mouths, but it will also help protect the bone that holds the teeth.
Tip #3: Deal with emergencies.
You can’t always avoid dental emergencies. If your child gets one of his or her permanent teeth knocked out, it’s important to keep the tooth moist. You can do this by placing the tooth in a glass of milk. However, if a tooth is knocked out, the best liquid to place a tooth in is Hank’s Balanced Salt Solution and the worst liquid is water. Reimplanting the tooth in to the socket as soon as possible is the best thing to do.  The most important thing to do, however, is to visit our office immediately.
Tip #4: Child-proof your home.
There are many steps you can take to child-proof your home. From putting up pieces of furniture that have sharp corners and edges, to making sure your child doesn’t bite down on hard objects, child-proofing the home will go a long way in preventing dental emergencies.
Tip #5: Always make your child sit in a car seat.
Until your child reaches the proper height and weight recommendations, you should always make him or her sit in a car seat while traveling. Not only will this help prevent dental emergencies, but it can also save your child’s life in the event of an accident.
Tip #6: Keep a close eye on your children.

One of the most common times that your child is likely to endure a dental emergency is when learning to walk. No matter the age of your child, though, make sure you keep a close eye on him or her at all times.