The 3 Ways to Prevent Bad Oral Health

Remember old-time scales?  I worked in a feed store during high school, and I became familiar with scales, digital ones.  We have an old-fashioned scale at our office similar to the one in this photo.  A counter-weight was added and then something was weighed in comparison with the counter-weight.  So you could tip the scales in your favor by adding more stuff to the feed side, if we're weighing grain.

This type of balance is something our bodies do all the time.  In fact, there are many systems that have a built-in balancing with hormones.  There are also a couple of balanced systems in our digestive system:  one in our intestines and one in our mouths.  They are very similar in some ways, but obviously, we are going to focus on the one in the mouth.

There are bacteria that live in our mouths!  Lots of different kinds, and yet a relatively few types of bacteria are responsible for cavities and gum disease.  The bacteria, if not cleaned off properly, will continue to grow until we feel fuzziness on our teeth.  They don't stop there, but continue to grow until they harden on the teeth like barnacles.  At this point, your breath probably stinks, even if you don't notice it!  The gums get swollen and bleed easily.  It becomes pretty easy to get an infection that hurts when things get this bad.

Back to the scales:  we need to tip the scales in our favor, if the bacteria are on one side, and health is on the other side.  There are a few things we can do to tip the scales:  clean the bacteria off and out of our teeth and gums, kill them with chemicals, and reverse what they are doing.  The next three blog posts will be about each of these:  Wash Your Mouth, Wipe Out the Bad Bugs, and Reversing the Stink!