Ellerslie Dental | Questions About Dental Care

Hi and welcome back to The Tooth Doctor, Ellerslie dental YouTube channel. We’re here with doctor Peter Yoo, the tooth doctor, and he’s going to break down and give us some answers about some questions that we might have about dental care.
So the toothbrush doesn’t remove six months of tartar 30 minutes before your dental appointments. I love that quote. It’s an unknown quote, but we’ve seen that probably on a meme somewhere in some, somebody walks in, hey, can I brush my teeth before I get my cleaning click? Okay.
Why did you find it anyways? I probably do a better job. The National Institute of Dental and cranial facial research has said that 92% of adults, 20 to 64 had dental carries in their permanent teeth.
Everyone knows what they should be doing to take care of their teeth, but yet so many people just don’t do it.
No. We get into habits and routines and that’s one of the things that we try and encourage at Ellerslie dental is about changing those habits, trying to build new good habits. And you know, we always do things that we want or don’t feel like, so yeah. And do that with discipline at first until they turn it. Yeah.
So should people visit the dentist every six months?
Yes. Seeing the dentist every six months, I would say maybe average person should see the dentist every six months, usually come in for checkup and then your, dental hygiene, your maintenance, make sure the gums are healthy and teeth are healthy. And then coming back in six months to Ellerslie dental, just for care or just getting some scaling, just remove some of the tartar is helpful in routine. Okay.
Now there are people that need to come in once a year or maybe they don’t need to come in twice a year to The Tooth Doctor’s Ellerslie dental clinic. I know people that take care of the teeth very well and every time they come in, once a year I’m like, wow, things are good. Everything is doing okay. But I do see sometimes those patients say like, oh, I don’t need to come in and may wait three, four years.
And then they come back and they have three or four cavities. So I really strongly encouraged minimum once a year, uh, routinely just coming in every six months. But there are patients that have some, some health issues that they have gum disease, they have bone disease. So those people, we sometimes recommend for hygiene maintenance on coming every four months or every three months to Ellerslie dental. And so there’s certain rules and certain measurements that we take that, that give us a reason for getting our patients to come in sooner to make sure that we can get back on track with their dead. Okay.
And are x-rays necessary every time, like even every six months or every year?
Well, our radiologists that our school gave us a little form that stated if you don’t, if you come in for x rays and you don’t have any cavities, that actually you should take x rays about every 18 months. But that’s about a year and a half now. Most, again, a lot of people don’t come in every 18 months. They come in once a year, so routinely will take x rays once a year. You know, we get patients saying, oh, I had my teeth are good, we, I don’t feel like having x rays, then it will take them maybe two years down the road. Okay. Now the opposite, if you have x rays and you have three or four cavities, they actually say that for a proper maintenance we should actually take x rays and every six months. Okay. Because if you have three cavities, there is a probability that you have more.
They just haven’t shown up on the x-ray yet. So coming back six months, taking x rays to check. But again, a lot of insurances don’t pay for x rays every six months. They just come every year. And a lot of times people don’t come back to our Ellerslie dental office in six months. So you know what, then those are situations where we would encourage to take x rays once a year or some people are more prone to tooth decay and gum disease than others. Yes. Uh, it’s, it’s very frustrating when you see a person that comes in and they brush your teeth twice a day, three times a day, and they come back every year and they have through for cavities is also frustrating, uh, for people to know that there are people that don’t go see a dentist for like eight, nine years. They brush once a day and they have one cavity, you know, so a lot of it is due to the bacteria.
There are certain bacteria that cause cavities. So if you have a low concentration of it, you’re less likely cavities as opposed to people that have higher concentration. But there are other factors in terms of your diet, your saliva, the amount of calcium you produce, things like that.
All right, how often should people brush their teeth?
Then after two times a day for sure it isn’t necessarily to go even more. All of it is just maintenance and care. So, you know, I routinely tell patients at the tooth doctor Ellerslie dental office, twice is important because of the bacteria, how they cycle and how they grow from baby germs to adult germs,that brushing twice a day. It helps to minimize their growth and ultimately minimize them. The concept of damage to the cause and the gum disease causing the cavities. So yeah, and I stated before in another video that here at the tooth doctor Ellerslie dental, we find that patients that brush once a day on a routinely tend to get anywhere from like four to 10 cavities. Whereas people that brush twice a day get around like one to five. Right. So it’s a lot less, if any.
Is mouthwash helpful?
Uh, when you’re, maybe you’re at work and maybe you can’t get to the bathroom and brush your teeth.
Is it helpful? It is very helpful. I think that using mouthwash on a routine basis will help strengthen your gums. I actually met a lady in her eighties she has all her teeth. You know, most people when they’re 80 have dentures or lost all their teeth. You have all your teeth. So what did you do? She actually said, you know what, I brush my teeth in the morning, regular toothpaste and brush. Okay. In the evening. Actually what I do is I actually use mouthwash. I swished around for 30 seconds. Then I actually, well the mouthwash is in my mouth. I brush my teeth with mouthwash. Oh, okay. What I do now is in the mornings, I actually shower in the morning and so I have some mouthwash. They can get to shower and then I brush my teeth. And so if the mouthwash spills out, I’m still washing myself. So it’s good and easy. But that was a helpful tip. I found that you don’t want to brush your teeth, you’re kind of, when you’re massaging the gums it, it kind of opens up the gums and the mouthwash we’ll get in there and actually really helps with active disease. Helps with bad breath. Well that’s good news.
How useful is chewing sugar free gum after meals?
It’s okay. I would say probably kind of in between kind of between lunch and supper. If you are chewing gum, it just helps for more saliva production. Chewing gum after a meal. I wouldn’t say that you should do it. If you want to chew gum after a meal, you know, cause you don’t want to have, you know, you know, the smell from the food that you eat. Um, but you know, chewing gum and then eating food. If you do it routinely, there’s always concern of like, you know, muscle, your jaw gets sore and things like that. Um, but yeah, chewing gum, it does help to produce more saliva, which in turn helps to neutralize the acids, uh, and then just helps them minimize in, you know, a saliva is obviously a natural lubricants that it helps to keep the area clean and just kind of flush away some of the foods. Okay. Thanks.
Here’s an interesting question. What are some Ellerslie dental tips you have to keep your teeth clean when you’re on a long trip? Maybe you can’t brush your teeth and you’re on an airplane for hours.
I know the last trip I went to, I made sure I had my toothbrush in my backpack. Um, uh, one little like small tip is you don’t have to always use toothpaste. People always think, oh, I have to carry toothpaste and mouthwash. You don’t. You just get some water, use your toothbrush. The whole idea is you’re scrubbing the teeth to remove the plaque and, and to remove the bacteria from it. So it’s not always that you have to use toothpaste. So if you’re on a long trip, just get out, click and brush, put toothbrush away and later when you get to a place that you can just quickly rinse, the tooth brush is, it’s fine. Right. Yeah. Well that’s a great tip actually is that is something I would’ve thought. Yeah, because you don’t always have to be in front of a sink or you know, have one, just get some bottled water.
Then you use the toothbrush quickly, but then you don’t have to like spit out the toothpaste. Yeah, that’s a good tip.
How often should you floss your teeth?
That is a common question at the Ellerslie dental office. Well again, they say, you know, only floss the teeth that you want to keep. But to be honest, I don’t actually tell my patients to be flossing every single day. Like I think what 1%, maybe 10% of population actually flosses every day. I think I have over like I have thousands of patients. Yeah. But I know maybe like counting on, on my hands, the people that floss every single day and yes, they’re teeth are great, their gums are healthy, they have no cavities. Yeah. There is a benefit doing that. But I never pushed someone to say, hey, you need to floss every day. That’s like me looking at someone that never goes to the gym and say, you need to go in the gym every single day.
Yeah. You need to eat healthy. It doesn’t work. Yeah. So I try and encourage patients, hey, let’s start small once a week. We can do once week, choose a date. If you, you know, choose a Monday, floss your teeth on Monday, you forget Monday and just do a Tuesday and then the following week go back to Monday. So in six months when I see you, it’s like, hey Johnny, uh, how’s the flossing one day a week been for you? I’ve been flossing once a week. Yeah. Great. And then slowly build from there. Right. So, you know, we want encourage Ellerslie dental patients to do things that are healthy but in baby steps. Right? Right. You can’t just jump, uh, and, and be like, you know, Mister America, you know, you can’t just all of a sudden start running and then you know, when the hundred meter, hundred meter dash, right. So, yeah. Yeah. You don’t want to be overwhelmed with things take time. You know, I’ve heard of studies saying that people new years resolution, right? Everybody says, I’m gonna start going to the gym. I’m going to start flossing. Two weeks later, you stop, what can you do? Right. So we want to try and do things in small steps that are reasonable and rational and makes sense and, and doable. Yeah, exactly. Right.
Are there any other tips or tricks to getting into good habits when it comes to the oral hygiene?
So you kind of give, you’ve given us a really good one with the flossing taking step at a time.
I do tell patients in terms of like, you know, I do have some patients where the brush once a day because they eat supper and then they’re hanging out and watching TV and then they fall asleep on the couch or they’re busy studying and, and things are, they’re just so tired. They just fall to bed. Right. So I tell patients, hey, let’s try and change that habit. Uh, you know, maybe after you eat shortly after quick brush teeth and, and then, and then go back to your studying or watch TV. Uh, I met a friend, she’s a hygienist now. She actually says what she does sometimes is she’ll, when she watches TV, she doesn’t watch a lot, but you watched it an hour. And what she’ll do is she’ll bring floss with her. She’ll watch TV. And so during the commercial 30 seconds, she will just click, go in and floss.
Okay. After the commercial’s done, she’s done. Yeah. Right. Like, realistically, flossing only should take like 30 seconds. Yeah. But people always just find the hassle of doing it and think if there’s, I don’t have, I never have time to do it. That’s, yeah. That’s not really true. It’s just do we don’t want to write different tips of trying to get into maybe a discipline that is, that is helpful and trying different things. Yeah. And you know, I know Ellerslie dental patients that they don’t like using toothbrush. Hey, let’s try an electric toothbrush. It’s more fun for fun for kids. Yeah. Making sure that you use toothbrush properly and those are sometimes more motivation of getting that done. That’s good.
Good tips. Thank you very much. Thanks for joining us here at the tooth doctor YouTube channel. Don’t forget to subscribe to the channel, like the video of you got some good information out of it. Again, it was lots of great content and information that you gave us to just think about how to make better habits, make it doable for us. So thanks for joining us and we’ll see you guys next time.