Maintaining good oral health is not solely about aesthetics or reacting to a dental issue you could have avoided. However, excellent oral health is critical to your overall well-being. So, you should not view regular dental visit recommendations as just that. Instead, you should see it as investing in preventative dentistry, where you prevent many avoidable oral issues or address those that have occurred immediately before advancing. Consistent or routine dental visits enable dental experts to detect signs of dental problems early and provide bespoke solutions for a healthy and radiant smile. Further discussed are the reasons you must prioritize regular dental visits.

Teaching Proper Dental Hygiene Practices and Ways of Preventing Future Oral Issues

Many people, children, and adults do not understand proper dental hygiene basics, contributing to the numerous oral issues they experience. Many brush their teeth only once a day, and they never floss. This might seem normal and have no adverse effects. However, it leads to severe dental problems in the future.

Learning and appreciating good dental hygiene is crucial, particularly in children. When your children are educated about good dental hygiene and ways of maintaining it at a tender age, they will make these routines a habit, leading to improved oral health. It is never too late for adults to acquire knowledge on proper dental hygiene techniques. The best person to teach good dental hygiene to children and adults is a dental expert. Education on dental hygiene is best passed on to patients during routine examinations, as the teeth are not the only focus, making these visits crucial to attaining and maintaining good oral and overall well-being.

The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) encourages parents to introduce regular dental visits to children as early as six months. Even though the child is not ready to learn at this age, you, the parent, can acquire knowledge crucial in preventing tooth decay and other dental concerns that occur at a tender age. Even before the development of milk teeth, the dentist will teach you how to use a damp washcloth to clean the child’s gums to eliminate bacteria. When the milk teeth sprout, you can use a baby toothbrush and a tiny portion of fluoride toothpaste to brush them. As they grow older, you can increase the amount.

Further, studies show that introducing routine dental visits at a young age has given children a better attitude towards dental health and made them more likely to observe proper oral hygiene practices later in life. Also, the regular visits to the dental clinic for checkups eliminate the anxiety, fear, or pain linked to dental evaluations or procedures. Many dental experts make their clinics child-friendly, allowing them to relax and experience painless dental assessments. That way, these children grow up without fear of visiting a dentist. Again, they are more likely to adopt the practices the family dentist teaches at home.

Learning appropriate dental hygiene practices for children and adults is beneficial because it reduces the risk of plaque and calculus accumulation, the primary sources of many dental illnesses. During the dental visits, the dentist cleans the teeth and gums to remove the tartar and plaque buildup. Besides, they identify symptoms of diseases like gingivitis before the condition progresses.

Additionally, with the knowledge of proper dental hygiene acquired from the dentist during routine visits, you can learn how to brush and floss teeth, putting plaque or tartar buildup at bay.

Early Detection of Tooth Decay

Regular visits to the dental clinic for checkups are also encouraged because even with proper dental hygiene, you cannot clean all areas of the teeth, as some are difficult to reach with regular brushing. When you fail to clean these hidden areas, plaque accumulates over time and later hardens to form calculus or tartar, which cannot be removed through regular brushing and flossing. You will require a deep cleaning procedure performed by a dental professional to identify and remove calculus. Routine visits to your dentist help them clean the areas that are difficult for you to reach with a brush or flosser, preventing tartar formation. If you already have calculus, the dentist will identify it during the examination and remove it using special tools. 

Without professional dental cleaning to remove tartar, the layer starts producing acidic or toxic bacteria that eat away at the enamel, forming holes that create enabling environments for bacteria breeding. Continued enamel erosion causes cavities. Cavities have no warning signs in the early stages, so it is difficult to know you have them. You start to experience discomfort when the tooth begins to decay. If the problem persists, the decay spreads over the teeth, causing severe pain and foul breath. The treatment of severe decay is also expensive.

However, when you regularly visit your dental experts, they can clean your teeth to remove tartar, thus preventing holes and cavities. If the cavities have formed, the dentist will take measures to prevent further erosion of the enamel, preventing decay or advancement of the decay. You might require a minor procedure to address the problem, but it is better than losing the entire tooth through an extraction after it has been completely damaged by decay.  

Lower the Chances of Tooth Decay in Children

In children, tooth decay stems from excessively acidic bacteria in the mouth, transmitted through contaminated utensils, pacifiers, and saliva. Also, when you taste your child’s food when spoon-feeding, you could expose the child to harmful oral bacteria through the spoon or pacifier if you do not clean it. Once the child is exposed to the bacteria, they are prone to developing cavities.

The same applies when the child feeds on foods with natural or artificial sugars. The sugars produce harmful acids that erode the enamel, causing cavities. Encourage your child to avoid sugary foods or brush their teeth at least 30 minutes after eating the sugary snack or beverage. Also, you should take them for regular checkups to enable the dentist to identify the decay or cavities at the onset and take measures to prevent or reverse the condition.

Untreated cavities can lead to tooth loss in toddlers, older children, and adults. When you lose a tooth through an extraction, your smile will suffer the consequences. In older children, the remaining teeth start shifting towards the open sockets, hindering the growth of permanent teeth. The bacteria causing cavities and decay can also spread to the gums, causing gum disease. These oral conditions are associated with pain and discomfort and affect your smile. Regular appointments with your dental experts are crucial because they can detect cavities or decay early, preventing irreversible or severe oral conditions.

Enables Early Detection of Oral Cancer

Mouth cancer is pervasive in the US, with the Oral Cancer Foundation reporting that nearly 53,000 Americans are diagnosed with the disease, of whom 9,750 die of the illness annually. Statistics show that only half of those diagnosed with the disease live past five years. Early oral cancer detection is the key to successful treatment and can be achieved by frequent visits to the dentist for oral examination. Your dental expert is qualified to identify signs of mouth cancer during routine checkups and can refer you to a specialist for accurate diagnosis and treatment. If you visit your dentist twice yearly, they will not miss early signs of cancer, if any, leading to an early diagnosis and increased chances of successful treatment.

Oral or oropharyngeal cancer does not have visible signs, like pain, that could prompt a patient to seek treatment. With no signs or pain, many patients cannot tell when they are developing the disease. A lack of early detection enables the illness to advance to secondary cancers whose malignant cells spread to other body parts, causing new cancers. It is the reason some patients are treated for cancer and recover, but years later, they are diagnosed with new cancer types in different body tissues. This highlights the importance of early detection before the cancerous cells spread. The best way to detect oral cancer early is through regular dental checkups.

When you see your dentist for an oral examination, they will not only check for signs of the common oral conditions like gum disease and decay but also identify signs of oropharyngeal cancer, if any, including:

  • Persistent lip or mouth sores that do not heal even with treatment
  • Pain or discomfort while swallowing
  • Lose teeth that do not stem from trauma
  • A growth in the oral cavity
  • A red or white patch in the oral cavity
  • Mouth or ear pain

These signs only indicate or suggest that you have oral cancer. So, when your dental expert identifies them, they will ask you to return for a follow-up after two weeks. If these symptoms persist, the dentist will refer you to an oncologist specializing in oral cancer for diagnosis. If you are diagnosed with the illness, you should start treatment immediately.

90% of oral cancers are usually squamous cell carcinomas (SCC). They happen because of the squamous cell mutation. The cause of the mutation remains unknown. Nevertheless, the use of tobacco, the human papillomavirus (HPV), and excessive alcohol consumption have been linked to the illness. Despite the cause of the SCC being unclear, it remains that oral cancer can be treated through early detection, which can be made possible through biannual visits to the dentist for examination to identify precancerous abnormalities, or if you have already developed the illness.

Enables Early Gum Disease Identification

Another advantage of biannual dentist visits is that you are inspected for gum disease. Plaque and tartar not only lead to caries and tooth decay. They are associated with gum disease. Poor dental hygiene causes food debris to accumulate between the gum margins. With time, the debris hardens, forming a colorless layer called plaque. Plaque can be removed through standard brushing. However, when you fail to brush and floss your teeth as recommended, the plaque hardens further to form a thick layer of toxins known as tartar or calculus, which requires professional cleaning to remove.

When calculus accumulates in the gum margins, it separates the gingiva tissue from the tooth. Besides, calculus produces toxic or acidic waste from bacteria that irritate the gums around the margins or lines connecting them to the teeth. As a result, the gums swell and start to pull away in what is called gum recession. This happens in the early stages of gum disease, commonly called gingivitis.

If gingivitis is allowed to progress, the bacterial infection in the gums begins to damage the tissues connecting the teeth and the gingiva tissue, leading to periodontal disease or periodontitis, characterized by bleeding gums, soft tissue inflammation, and redness in the gums. Other gum disease signs include:

  • Pain when chewing
  • Increased tooth sensitivity
  • Loose teeth
  • Receding gums
  • Persistent foul breath that does not go away even with brushing and the use of mouthwash

The infection in the soft tissue can also spread to the jawbone, weakening it. The jawbone anchors your teeth. So, when weakened, your teeth become weak and begin to fall out. Under these circumstances, you will require a bone graft to strengthen the bone and restoration procedures like dental implants to replace the missing teeth.

Visiting your dentist at least twice a year can help identify gum disease symptoms early during inspection. If you have gingivitis, the dentist can reverse the condition by recommending changes to your oral hygiene routine and deep cleaning to remove the tartar layers. When the illness is advanced, the dentist can utilize special tools and technology, like X-rays, to determine the extent of bone damage. The dentist can recommend medication or surgery based on the infection's severity and damage.

Find a Reputable Advanced Dentistry Service Near Me

Your dental expert thoroughly inspects your mouth, teeth, gums, and neck during routine visits to look out for signs of various oral concerns like mouth cancer, gum disease, decay, and cavities. Once the symptoms are detected, the dentist suggests proper treatment or appropriate oral hygiene measures to address the problem. Thorough evaluation requires the use of advanced tools.

At Los Angeles Advanced Dentistry, we employ state-of-the-art technology and tools coupled with experienced dentists to ensure no illness is left undetected. Call us today at 310-361-2080 to schedule a consultation or dental evaluation.