Dental Wellness In Minneapolis

The saying goes "Cleanliness is next to godliness". These old sayings have a lot of meaning packed into them, short and sweet so they come to mind easily when needed as we live out our lives. We have this saying because, when our bodies are clean, infection and disease have less chance of taking hold in us. We remain well.

Wellness and bad breath

One area where cleanliness is very important is in our mouths, which of course is the main area of interest in dentistry and to your dentist. If our mouths are not clean, we harbor bacteria. Some bacteria is ok of course, and we don't want to eliminate all bacteria from our bodies, even from our mouths. Simple bacteria — that is bacteria that has not hardened into plague — can be a cause of bad breath however.

Bad breath can have a direct effect on our overall wellness, because it can affect how people view us and react to us. People almost always react negatively when the smell bad breath. Their body language is to get farther away from the other person. Simply brushing the teeth more often and correctly can eliminate most of this problem.

So, in addition to "old sayings", we also have "rules of thumb"; brushing twice a day and after meals is one your dentist would certainly encourage for good dental cleanliness. And since we all feel better when other people like us, eliminating bad breath can also affect our sense of wellness.

Wellness and infection

Much more seriously affecting wellness, however, is infection. Infection of the gums — known as gum disease in dentistry — occurs when bacteria remains in the mouth for long periods of time and changes form into plague and tartar, which cause infection.

Unlike an infection from an external wound, however, gum disease and its infection in the mouth is silent and painless. Many, many people who have such an infection do not even know it is there.

But the body does know when it has an infection, and like any other infection, the body fights gum disease and tries to remove it. Unfortunately, the body's natural defenses can never defeat gum disease, a disease that only worsens with time. Nevertheless, the body constantly fights gum disease anyway, draining the body of energy and resources, and depleting from our sense of wellness.

If you imagine this infection as an open, infected sore on the body, one can easily see how this would affect wellness. But when the infection caused by gum disease is in the mouth, and that infection is painless and silent, we are less aware of how it is affecting our overall health.

Returning to wellness and good oral health

If your gums are sensitive and bleed, you could have an infection going on in your mouth as described. Your dentist can easily determine if this is the case, and the techniques of dentistry and hygiene can help!

What we do here in our office is first determine the scale of the problem, and, if plaque and tartar are extensive in the mouth, we clean the teeth below the gum line with deep cleaning to remove the plaque and tartar. This gets the state of the mouth in good shape for regular cleaning, which, depending on the severity of the gum disease, may need to be done more regularly than once every six months.

In any case, getting rid of this infection is a great relief to the body, and increases one's sense of wellness.