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Daily brushing and flossing are essential to optimal oral hygiene, but they’re only one side of the oral health equation. The other side? Seeing the dentist every six months. Here’s why you shouldn’t skip routine dental cleanings and exams.
Healthy teeth and gums are a vital part of your overall well-being. While limiting your sugar intake and having a consistent oral hygiene routine can go a long way toward protecting your oral health, your daily dental habits are just one side of the oral health equation.
The other side? Having twice-yearly professional cleanings and dental exams, along with periodic digital X-rays, to ensure your mouth is as clean and healthy as possible.
Dr. Annie Aboulian and our seasoned team at Burbank Dental Studio recommend that patients of all ages have a comprehensive dental cleaning and exam every six months. Here, we explore four important reasons why you shouldn’t skip routine dental visits.
1. You’re more likely to have plaque buildup
When the normal bacteria in your oral ecosystem combine with saliva, food, and fluids, they form a soft, sticky film on the surface of your teeth called plaque. Daily brushing and flossing as recommended helps clear away dental plaque to keep your teeth and gums healthy.
Unfortunately, no matter how well you brush and floss, it can be hard to remove plaque fully from every surface. When you see Dr. Annie and our team for a professional cleaning every six months, our specialized tools clear away any lingering plaque — gently and completely — to give you a full oral hygiene reset.
Why is this so important? Lingering plaque eventually hardens into tartar, a calcified form of plaque that can only be removed by professional dental tools. Worse, plaque buildup is the starting point of most oral health problems, including dental decay and gum disease.
2. You’re more likely to wind up with deep decay
Let’s face it — even the best oral health habits can’t always prevent tooth decay: The chew surfaces of your back molars can be tricky to brush thoroughly, and forgetting to floss can leave food particles and liquid residues between your teeth until the next time you floss.
If you tend to skip routine dental cleanings and exams, you’re more likely to have plaque building up on these hard-to-reach areas, too. This sticky film effectively traps sugar against your teeth, where it eats away at the enamel and creates holes, or spots of decay.
When you see Dr. Annie and our team every six months, we’re well-positioned to detect dental decay early, in its most treatable stage.
Prompt cavity detection can mean the difference between simply having to treat a minor surface cavity or get a small filling — or needing a root canal or tooth extraction procedure for deep decay.
3. You’re more likely to develop gum disease
Along with tooth decay, gum (periodontal) disease is a leading oral health problem: About 1 in 2 adults aged 30 or older has some degree of gum disease, as do nearly 3 in 4 older adults. The term gum disease refers to infection and inflammation of the gum and bone tissues that surround and support your teeth.
Plaque buildup may be the innocuous starting point of gum disease, but once your gum tissues are infected and inflamed, the disease is progressive. Allowed to advance unchecked, gum disease almost always leads to eventual tooth loss.
The good thing about dealing with gum disease, however, is that it’s totally reversible in its earliest stages — and we can spot the signs of early gum disease, called gingivitis, during your routine dental exam.
When we do, we perform a deep cleaning and provide you with actionable steps to help you reverse the problem as quickly as possible.
Simply put, skipping biannual dental visits means giving gum disease time to take root and advance. And once gum disease becomes more advanced, you can’t reverse it — you must live with it and treat it with targeted periodontal therapies.
4. You’re missing out on key preventive care
When you see Dr. Annie and our team for twice-yearly routine cleanings and exams, you also receive preventive dental care services tailored to your specific oral health needs.
This may include anything from cavity prevention (i.e., fluoride treatments, sealants), early disease detection (i.e., oral cancer screenings), and oral health education to tooth eruption assessment and future orthodontic planning (i.e., X-rays).
When you skip routine dental visits, you miss out on the chance to receive the kind of preventive care that can help you maintain optimal oral health for life.
When was your last dental cleaning and exam?
Whether you’re due for a regular dental cleaning and exam, or you haven’t been to the dentist in years, Dr. Annie and our team are here to help you stay on track — or get back on track — with your oral health. Call or click online to request an appointment at Burbank Dental Studio in Burbank, California, today.