People often wait too long to head to the dental office for a regular checkup. While most preventative dental care happens at home, it’s important to visit a professional dentist every six months to manage plaque, check for diseases, and prevent complications from coming up in the future. Oral hygiene is directly linked to keeping other parts of your body healthy, making routine general dental checkups extremely important to managing your overall health.
What happens during a general checkup?
During a routine dental checkup, your dentist will make sure your oral health is firing on all cylinders. Your dentists checks the current state of your teeth, tongue, gums, and face—these can all be an indicator for diseases building elsewhere in the body. During a general checkup, x-rays may also be taken if necessary. Your dentist is looking for any abnormalities, including cavities, gum inflammation, or any discoloration of sorts.
After your initial inspection, the dentist or dental hygienist will perform routine cleaning to remove the plaque and tartar built up on your teeth. During this process, the dentist or hygienist removes tartar buildup in hard to reach places that brushing won’t be able to get done at home. The dentist can also repair mostly healthy teeth from cavity infection using fillings. Following cleaning, your teeth are treated with polish to protect your teeth from future plaque buildup.
What are the benefits of visiting a dentist regularly?
The benefits of visiting a dentist regularly can save your life. Going in for a routine checkup can significantly decrease your chances of developing periodontal disease, bad breath, and cavities. The sooner diseases can be caught, the better the chances of combatting the permanent effects of bad dental hygiene. Dental visits destroy the bacteria building up before they can enter the blood stream and affect other portions of the mouth or other parts of the body.
It is especially important for children to visit the dentist regularly to be sure their teeth grow in properly. When children visit the dentist every six months, it helps build good dental hygiene habits for preventing many dental and health complications that commonly affect adults. Teeth also grow stronger and whiter through developing good dental hygiene early.
As an added bonus to saving your health, health care costs significantly drop when you’re not having to visit the doctor’s office as frequently.