DEAR MAYO CLINIC: My 7-month-old daughter just lately bought her first tooth. She likes to chew on her teething ring. I need to begin good dental habits early and create a routine of brushing her tooth twice a day. When ought to I introduce a toothbrush so she will get snug with it? Do you have got another ideas for establishing good oral hygiene early?

ANSWER: Dental infections are one of the crucial widespread infections in youngsters. Even although dentistry has come a great distance with the newest dental developments, you continue to should play an energetic position in your individual dental care — and your youngsters’s.

Children who’ve decay of their child tooth usually tend to have decay of their grownup tooth. Oral well being is whole-person well being, and untreated dental illness has been linked to stroke, coronary heart illness and diabetes in maturity.

Dental caries — in any other case often known as tooth decay or cavities — have an effect on many youngsters and adults. Dental caries are an infectious illness attributable to micro organism transferred out of your mouth, or one other caregiver’s mouth, to your youngsters’s mouth. This illness is sort of fully preventable by means of good dental habits and routine checkups with a dentist.

Starting at 6 months, method must be blended with fluoride water to make bottles. Nighttime consuming will increase the danger of tooth decay as a result of lactose, which is milk sugar. In normal, the extra carbohydrates a toddler consumes, the larger probability for cavities.

Every baby ought to have an oral well being examination by age 1, or when the primary tooth emerges. Regular dental visits ought to observe each three to 6 months. Dental care is totally different for every household, and it might embody a pediatric dentist or household dentist; girls, infants and youngsters clinics; and even your well being care skilled’s workplace.

Fluoride varnish must be utilized to your youngsters’s tooth each three to 6 months, and sometimes may be utilized at their well-child go to by the well being care workforce. This topical fluoride can stop and even reverse early cavities. Fluoride is a mineral naturally present in water and a few meals. It strengthens the tooth enamel, the laborious outer coating on tooth.

You can set up wholesome habits along with your baby when they’re younger. By 6 months, youngsters ought to have fluoride of their water, and youngsters of brushing age ought to use comfortable brushes and fluoridated toothpaste. If you do not have entry to fluoridated water, your youngsters’s well being care workforce can suggest a supply of fluoride, together with nursery water or fluoride drops or tablets.

Children want supervision with brushing a minimum of midway by means of grade college. Parents ought to at all times supervise. You can cease supervision whenever you assume your baby is doing pretty much as good of a job as you’ll. Brushing two instances a day is often sufficient, and youngsters ought to start flossing as quickly as their dentist recommends it.

Frequent snacking will increase your youngsters’s threat for cavities. The saliva of their mouth is essential to stop cavities. If the mouth often has meals or sugary liquid, the saliva can’t defend the tooth from decay.

Avoid soda pop, juice and frequent snacking. Not solely do they enhance the danger of weight problems, however the mixture of sugar and acid breaks down tooth. The identical goes for juice. Juice is only a type of soda pop with out carbonation. Instead, select water to drink between meals and choose one or two instances every day to have a snack. Also, embody meals and drinks wealthy in calcium and vitamin D to assist construct robust bones and tooth.

You might help your youngsters create a lifetime of wholesome dental habits, together with cleansing their tooth, recurrently visiting a dentist and maintaining a healthy diet meals. — Dr. Erin Westfall, Family Medicine, Mayo Clinic Health System, Mankato, Minnesota.

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