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Last Updated on December 8, 2023
Oral health is important if you want to continue to keep your teeth strong and performing for you day in and day out. They are one part of the body that we really can’t live without, and it is critical to treat them with care. So, can changing your eating habits also improve your oral health? There is a connection between diet and healthy teeth, and we want to explore that connection and all that it means.
Americans Eat More At Restaurants Than At Home
Recent surveys have concluded that Americans spend a slightly larger portion of their budget (50.3%) on food at restaurants compared to what they spend on groceries (49.7%). This is a bit troubling from an oral health perspective because restaurant food doesn’t need to be as healthy as other choices that one can make at home. The fact is, restaurants tend to load their foods up with salt, fat, sugar, and anything else that they believe will help make the food sell. If they simply continue to add more of these things to it, they may sell more food, but your teeth may suffer if you eat it. Instead of spending so much money on restaurants, Americans should reconsider their choices and perhaps opt for making meals at home more often. It may help save their teeth.
Focus On Foods That Make You Full
Eating too often may not only cause problems with your stomach and waistline but perhaps also with your teeth says this dentist in Chandler. If you are constantly gnashing away at more food, your teeth may start to experience the strain of this repeated action. This is why you should check out the satiety scores of the foods you consume. This score attempts to measure how satisfied a particular food will make you when you consume it. Scores over 100 on the satiety measurement are highly satisfying and likely to keep you feeling full for longer. The types of foods that hit that mark include foods high in fiber and protein. You can think of meats, bananas, and other foods like that. Foods below that score are less likely to keep you full for longer. These include foods high in sugar.Aim to eat foods that have a high satiety score. Not only do you feel better when you eat them, but also so you can avoid putting too much strain on your teeth. If you can reduce the amount of strain on your teeth, you can start to enjoy the foods you are consuming more fully without concerns about your oral health.
Gum Disease Is A Big Culprit
Something that many people don’t realize about losing teeth as an adult is that adults over the age of 35 tend to lose teeth more from gum disease than they do from cavities. It seems that we spend so much time trying to take care of the teeth directly that we forget to look at the health of our gums as critical. When we neglect our gums, we can potentially have gum diseases that spring up and make life even more challenging for us. Thus, we need to try to pay attention to how we treat our gums just as much as we focus on other aspects of our oral health. If we are not careful, it is possible that we could end up losing teeth to gum disease, even more so than from cavities.A dentist will always remind you to be mindful of these things, but it is up to you to actually heed that advice. They mention it for your own good, and you should pay attention to what they say because of its impact on your life. If you want to keep all of your teeth around in the long run, then you need to be very careful about what you eat and how you care for your gums.
