As with any health care, dentistry comes with its fair share of confusing recommendations, nonsensical terminology, and overall general questions about the whats, whys, and hows. At our dental office in Asheboro, we strive to ensure all our patients have their questions answered completely and accurately, so we’ve dedicated this blog to some of the more common questions we get asked.

“What is Morning Breath?”

We’ve all experienced the stale stench of a mouth closed for the past eight hours or so , the odor assaults the nostrils and we wince in disgust. But why does breath insist on smelling so darn gross in the morning? The answer is this: there’s not as much saliva in your mouth while you sleep as when you’re awake. Saliva is the natural way to rinse away bad breath bacteria, and when the supply decreases, bacteria are left to multiply and we’re left with morning breath. Usually a proper brushing and flossing will diminish the smell. If it doesn’t and your breath is chronically a little on the sour side, it may be a sign of something serious. Get to your dentist as soon as possible.

“How Often do I REALLY Need to see a dentist?”

We didn’t make up the twice a year rule simply because we enjoy seeing you, even though that’s still true. Biannual visits are important to both your oral health and your overall health for several reasons. First, regular visits allow us to catch any small problems before they have a chance to become huge, possibly painful problems. Second, many dental diseases are linked with whole-body health, so the sooner we catch an issue and begin to treat it, the healthier your mouth and your body will be. There are times when we recommend more than two visits a year, which is pretty common if you’re at risk for oral cancer, gum disease, or have an extended treatment plan. If we recommend it, you should follow it. Your smile will thank you.

“Do I Need to Floss?”

If you want to keep your smile healthy, and we assume you do, then yes, you absolutely need to floss. Flossing removes plaque and bacteria between teeth that a toothbrush alone can’t reach. In fact, if you don’t floss, 35% of your teeth surfaces aren’t getting cleaned and your chance for decay increases. We recommend brushing twice a day and flossing once a day.

We’ve only touched on a few of the many dental questions we’ve heard. If you have any others, give our dental office in Asheboro a call. We’re here to help make dentistry easy and comfortable, and we’d be happy to have you.
Welcoming patients from Asheboro, Randolph County, and Randleman.

How’s your relationship with your toothbrush? Is it working for you? Is it getting the job done well? At our dental office in Asheboro, we hate to be the bearer of bad news, but your toothbrush relationship should never be long-term. Is it time you moved on to something better?

Toothbrushes are specifically designed to gently and effectively remove plaque, bacteria, and food debris from teeth. But they aren’t designed to last forever. In fact, the American Dental Association strongly advises against keeping a toothbrush any longer. At three-to-four months, toothbrushes begin to show signs that it’s just not working out, and nobody wants to stay in a relationship that’s not working.

Signs It’s Over

There are some obvious signs that it’s time to toss your current toothbrush and look for a newer model. Most clues of an old toothbrush are found in the bristles, so keep an eye out for:

• Fraying
• Discoloration
• Flattening

If you notice any of these signs, head to the store and treat yourself to a newer, better toothbrush. You deserve it.

How to Care for Your New Toothbrush

Like any relationship, you should treat your toothbrush with care for a healthy, three-month commitment. Follow the tips below to get the most out of your time together.

• Sharing is NOT Caring. One of the main things you can do to keep your toothbrush in tip-top shape is keep it for yourself. Sharing toothbrushes means sharing bacteria, and that’s pretty gross.

• Rinse it Well. Following each and every cleaning, it’s important to thoroughly rinse your toothbrush. A good rinsing farther removes any bacteria that may be lingering around.

• Store it Correctly. Keeping your toothbrush out to air dry is the ideal storage solution. Avoid trapping it in a container. Containers encourage bacteria growth.

Not only should you always take care of your toothbrush and use it twice a day, you should also maintain regular appointments at our Asheboro dental office. Pairing a healthy at-home oral health routine with professional cleanings is the best way to maintain a healthy, problem-free smile. If you’re in need of a new dentist, give us a call today. We’ll be happy to have you.

Welcoming patients from Asheboro, Randolph County, and Randleman.

Any emergency is serious and should be treated as such. Dental emergencies, which include any injury to the teeth, gums, or mouth, are no exception. At our Asheboro dental office, we understand that a dental emergency can be scary, so we’re here to help give you a few tips on how to handle several types.

Abscess

An abscess is a very serious dental problem and should not be ignored. An abscess is an infection that affects the root or the space in between teeth and may feel like a painful pimple-like protrusion on the gums. If left untreated, an abscess might damage surrounding teeth, tissue, and the infection can even spread to other parts of your body. Because of these very serious concerns, it’s extremely important to get to your dentist as soon as possible. Prior to your appointment, try rinsing with warm salt water several times a day. This should ease the pain and encourage the bacteria inside to come to the surface.

Lost Filling

If you lose a filling, sugarless gum can be a temporary fix. Just make super sure it’s sugarless or you’ll experience some serious pain. Take a piece of the gum and place it into the cavity. Then call your dentist to get a permanent fix.

Chipped/Broken Tooth

A chipped or broken tooth might result from anything like a popcorn kernel, opening packaging with your teeth, or a fall. When a tooth is chipped, the first thing to do is rinse your mouth out with warm water and find any pieces, if possible, and rinse them off, too. Then apply gauze and slight pressure if there is any bleeding, and a cold compress to the cheek to ease pain. Get to your dentist to fix the chip.

Toothache

A toothache is your mouth’s way of letting you know that something is not right. Ease the pain and help keep other problems away by first rinsing with warm salt water. Salt water can help decrease swelling and keep dangerous bacteria from attacking. If the pain is severe, try placing a cold compress against your cheek or apply a bit of clove oil to the sore spot. Again, get to your dentist as soon as you can.

One of the best ways to avoid a dental emergency in the first place is to maintain regular visits to our dental office in Asheboro. Regular checkups and cleanings allow us to catch and treat any potential problems before they can turn into an unexpected dental emergency. However, anything can happen at any time, so if you do experience an emergency, give us a call right away.

Welcoming patients from Asheboro, Randolph County, and Randleman.

Now that summer is officially here, we’re all starting to plan those well-deserved vacations or long weekends away. Naturally, you also need to pack. So you load up on clothes, snacks, medications, and everything you may possibly need. Yet you forget your toothbrush. What do you do when you’ve reached your destination and it’s time to brush those pearly whites? Take some advice from our dental office in Asheboro.

Solution #1

Even if you’re without a toothbrush, you should still do something to rid your mouth of the bacteria that accumulates over time and after meals. But how? With a paper towel!

A clean, sturdy paper towel can go a long way toward getting your teeth clean until you have a chance to get to the store and buy another toothbrush. Simply find the thickest paper towel you can, wet it, dab on some toothpaste, and wrap it around your finger. Place your towel-wrapped finger along the gum line and gently scrub outwards. Then follow the same technique on the backs and chewing surfaces of each individual tooth. Don’t forget about the tongue! Scrub it as best as you can. When you’re done, rinse well.

Solution #2

If you forget both a toothbrush and toothpaste, this tip is for you.

Start by washing your hands with soap and warm water, but don’t dry them. While fingers are still wet, take your index finger and begin to scrub it over each individual tooth, the backs, and chewing surfaces. If a paper towel or soft wash cloth is handy, wet it and follow up your finger cleaning with a gentle brush of the cloth. Rinse, swish, spit, and repeat if necessary.

Solution #3

If you have no toothbrush and no toothpaste, but have some handy ingredients, you can make your own temporary paste to use with the above tip. All it takes is some water, salt, or baking soda. One or two teaspoons of salt or baking soda dissolved into warm water act as a gentle abrasive for your teeth, and can be an adequate replacement to toothpaste if needed.

This summer, or any time you’re away from home and find yourself without a toothbrush or toothpaste, follow the tips above. While these aren’t long-term solutions and a proper toothbrush and toothpaste should be found as soon as possible, they can go a long way in getting dangerous bacteria off your teeth. And as always, keeping up with appointments at our dental office in Asheboro are crucial to maintaining a healthy smile for a lifetime.

Accepting patients from Asheboro, Randolph County, Randleman, and nearby neighborhoods.

We always encourage the patients at our Asheboro dental office to brush and floss everyday — usually in the morning and before hitting the hay at night. But brushing after meals, including lunch at work, is just as important. In fact, keeping up with your oral hygiene while at the office is better for your mouth, and your job.

While skipping the toothbrush post-lunch probably won’t get you fired, just like brushing alone won’t reward you with a promotion, good oral health is important for your career. In a study conducted by the Academy of General Dentistry and Oral-B, we found out just how your smile, teeth, and breath affect the workplace.

The Findings

• 40% of respondents cited a smile as the first thing they notice about a co-worker
• 32% said bad breath was the least attractive trait
• 75% ate two times or more a day while at work
• 14% brushed their teeth following a meal!

If you’re part of that 14%, you’ve made us proud, keep it up! If you’re in the other 86%, don’t’ worry, we’re here to help.

The Importance of Post-Meal Brushing

When we eat, our teeth are exposed to many elements including starches, sugars, and acids. If these are left on the teeth, bacteria will begin to attack the tooth enamel and make teeth more susceptible to decay. Even if there’s no evidence of food remaining in the mouth, these dangerous bacteria are growing and causing damage. This makes brushing after meals crucial for a healthy mouth.

Switch It Up

Brushing after lunch is a great step to ward off any lingering bacteria, but there are two other main meals we typically eat throughout the day — breakfast and dinner. Many patients we talk to typically brush their teeth before digging into their bacon and eggs each morning. Try switching it up and brushing after. Same thing with dinner. The sooner you can brush after eating, the better (unless the food is high in acid, then wait about an hour). Brushing after these meals is just as important as storing a toothbrush in your office desk drawer and using it after lunch.

While brushing after meals is important to oral health, it’s still necessary to maintain recommended appointments to our dental office in Asheboro. With a proper at-home, and at-work, oral health care routine and regular visits with us, we’ll help keep your smile healthy and your co-workers happy.

Welcoming patients from Asheboro, Randolph County, and Randleman.

We usually talk a lot about tooth health, proper oral hygiene, and how important it is to take care of your teeth. However, all of us at our dental office in Asheboro want to take this opportunity to talk about an often forgotten part of your overall oral health. Your tongue.

Your tongue is a pretty amazing muscle. Not only is it one of the strongest muscles in the body, it serves many purposes including chewing, swallowing, and talking. But it can also hold a lot of bacteria and other smile-damaging particles. This makes proper tongue care just as important to proper teeth and gum care.

Why to Take Care of Your Tongue

Making your tongue a daily part of your oral hygiene routine has lots of benefits.

• Yum!! A cleaner tongue means your taste buds aren’t covered with bacteria or acid, so food tastes better. This benefit alone makes us want to go brush our tongues right now!

• Keeps Teeth Healthier. Your tongue and teeth are in contact most of the day, everyday, which means your teeth are constantly exposed to whatever is on the tongue. If bacteria and acid are lurking on your tongue, the chance for tooth decay and erosion greatly increases.

• Ahhh, Fresh! While there are many reasons behind bad breath, an uncared for tongue is often a culprit. Giving your tongue the attention it deserves is a great way to keep bacteria and bad breath at bay However, if your bad breath doesn’t go away, see your dentist as soon as you can as it may be a sign of something serious.

Give Your Tongue Some Love!

Every time you brush your teeth, make sure you gently brush your tongue too. With over 10,000 taste buds on the tongue, it creates a lot of space for gross stuff to hide. A quick brush with your toothbrush can help. If you have trouble brushing your tongue, which is pretty common, ask your dentist about a tongue scraper.

At our dental office in Asheboro, we want to make all of our patients aware of the importance of proper tongue care. Make sure to brush at least twice a day, including your tongue, and floss once a day. And as always, regular appointments with us can help catch any problems before they become serious.

Accepting patients from Asheboro, Randolph County, and Randleman.

Your body endures a lot of changes during pregnancy. Your feet may swell, you may be sore in strange or new places, and your teeth may decay. It’s true, your teeth are not one of the more popular concerns during pregnancy but at our dental office in Asheboro, we’re here to tell you they should be.

Why is it so important to keep an eye on your teeth during pregnancy? One reason is morning sickness. Morning sickness causes stomach acids to enter the mouth and if left there, the acid may erode enamel and lead to decay.

What to do if Morning Sickness is Plaguing You

We wish we had a solution to end morning sickness for every pregnancy. But we do have some ways you can decrease the chance of it affecting your smile.

• Rinse with water. Swish some water around in your mouth following a bout of morning sickness to remove some of the acid from your teeth.
• Wait an hour. Wait at least an hour before brushing after you’re sick. Rinse with water in the meantime. Acid may weaken enamel. Brushing can scratch the enamel and lead to decay.
• Keep drinking water. The more water you drink, the lower the acidity level in your mouth will be.
• Smear on toothpaste. Putting a dollop of toothpaste on your finger and rubbing it on your teeth can further protect them against acid.
• Use a tongue scraper. After vomiting, if you take a tongue scraper across your tongue, you can successfully remove some of the acid that may stick around on the tongue and then transfer to the teeth.

If you’re pregnant, we’d love to see you at our dental office in Asheboro. Not only is it important to get a check up during pregnancy to ensure there are no scary problems lurking in your mouth, we will help minimize your risk of decay. Let’s keep your teeth healthy throughout your pregnancy and for years to come.

Accepting patients from Asheboro, Randolph County, and Randleman.

At our dental office in Asheboro, we’re pros at getting and keeping our neighbors’ smiles healthy and beautiful. But what we want to make sure all of our patients know is that dental care for their pets is just as important.

1. Choose the right tools

When you decide to start brushing your animal’s teeth, it’s important to choose the proper brush. There are canine-specific toothbrushes that you can buy, or a clean piece of gauze wrapped around a finger will work just fine. When it comes to the toothpaste, ask your vet what’s best. Never use human toothpaste on an animal as it could cause stomach problems.

2. Use the right technique

Brushing animals’ teeth is very similar to brushing your own. Make sure to hold the brush or your gauzed-wrapped finger at a 45 degree angle and gently rub in small circles. The cheek side of the teeth often accumulates the most tartar, so try to pay extra attention in that area. Brushing should occur two or three times a week.

3. Know the signs of disease

Some signs of an issue with your pet’s oral health could include:

• Bad breath
• Excessive drooling
• Swollen gums
• Loose teeth

If you notice any of these symptoms, schedule an appointment with your vet.

4. Select a healthy diet

Just like humans, your pet’s diet can go a long way toward keeping teeth healthy. There’s specially formulated food your vet can recommend that will help control plaque and tartar formation. When it comes to snacks, avoid table scraps and choose healthy dog treats instead.

Make sure to keep your pet’s smile in its best shape by following the tips above and visiting the vet regularly. To keep your smile healthy, maintain regular appointments at our Asheboro dental office and make sure to brush and floss daily.

Accepting patients from Asheboro, Randolph County, Randleman, and surrounding areas.

You work hard, and you deserve the right to play hard too. That’s the whole reason for vacation days. But too often, vacation days are used for something other than fun times with the family. In fact, 164 million work hours are lost each year because of dental problems. At our dental office in Asheboro, we’d prefer you save days away from the office for something fun other than visiting us (although we promise we really like seeing you!), and we know just the way.

It’s All About Prevention

There’s plenty of reasons we recommend you come to see us at least twice a year. Sure, we love to see you and catch up on how things are going, but in order to ensure your mouth isn’t lurking with some scary stuff, we need to get you in the chair and check out what’s happening.

Preventive appointments with your dentist in Asheboro are crucial to catching any potential problems before they become big, big problems. There’s a common belief that if you have a problem with your teeth, you’d know it. Unfortunately, that’s not true. Many times when you start to become aware of a problem, it’s already progressed into something more serious.

Gum Disease

Gum disease is one of those sneaky oral health concerns that can show no symptoms. However, when it does, it’s usually overlooked as normal. We’re talking about bleeding gums when you brush or floss. Bleeding is never ok and is a sign that something needs serious attention. If caught early on, gum disease is treatable. If it’s left to fester, it can lead to tooth loss and whole-body problems like heart disease and stroke.

Cavities

Cavities rarely have any symptoms early on, and if you keep regular hygiene appointments, we often catch them in the beginning stages, making them easier to treat. It’s when we don’t catch them before they have a chance to affect the nerves when you will have pain. When this happens, treatment is usually more advanced and may warrant a root canal or another procedure.

Don’t let dental problems keep you from enjoying your time off. Make an appointment at our dental office in Asheboro. We’ll make sure to get and keep your smile in it’s healthiest form so it’s ready for all those smile-inducing moments this vacation.

Accepting patients from Asheboro, Randolph County, Randleman, and surrounding areas.

When you think of spit, do you think of bad manners, gross droplets on the sidewalk, or even worse, a bottle full of chewing tobacco saliva? Most people think of spit as something pretty gross and detestable. However, at our dental office in Asheboro, we think spit is pretty neat, and we’d like to tell you why.

25,000 Quarts

An average human produces about 25,000 quarts of spit throughout their lifetime. That’s enough to fill your swimming pool this summer. Though we don’t recommend it. We’d like you to keep your spit in your mouth for a couple reasons.

Spit is incredibly helpful when it comes to the health of your mouth and teeth. Each time you eat, you produce more saliva. That’s not a coincidence as one of saliva’s main purposes it to help clear the mouth of food particles that may get stuck behind. It’s also fantastic at neutralizing acids and protecting teeth against decay. If salivary glands aren’t producing enough spit, you’ll start to experience dry mouth. With dry mouth comes a whole host of problems including oral infections and increased risk for cavities. All that spit isn’t so bad anymore, is it?

DNA Insights

Your spit can give you a fantastic window into your own DNA. A slight swab of spit from your cheek will contain cells. Inside each cell is a nucleus. Inside each nucleus there are chromosomes which are made up of DNA. There are many organizations out there that can then analyze your DNA-filled spit and provide you information on what they find that truly makes you, you. All from a little spit.

Save a Life

Every three minutes, someone in the United States is diagnosed with blood cancer. BeTheMatch.org is an organization that strives to raise the awareness of blood cancers by increasing the bone marrow donor registry. Bone marrow is one of the most common treatments of blood cancer, and it’s often hard to find a compatible match. How is this related to spit? All it takes to get on the registry is a little swab of your cheek. Be The Match then scans the registry for each patient to help find donors for patients.

At our Asheboro dental office, we’re full of fun facts about spit, teeth, and your mouth. If you’d like to know more cool trivia, give us a call today and schedule an appointment. We’d love to have you!

Welcoming patients from Asheboro, Randolph County, Randleman, and surrounding areas.