Fight off colds by focusing on your oral health.
Working through a bad cold or cough can be exhausting and frustrating. Often it seems you’re hardly over one cold before you pick up another bug. Being sick is never enjoyable and can sap your energy, so finding ways to keep yourself healthier to limit how often you get sick is the aim. This allows you to be able to put in your best effort at work or school, fully engage during family time, and have leftover energy to dedicate to your friends and hobbies. While it may not seem like it, taking care of your oral health is one simple way that you can improve your body’s ability to fight illnesses. In addition to practicing great oral hygiene at home, making time in your busy schedule for a dental checkup every six months can actually help you stay healthier year-round. Here are a few ways that committing to a regular dental checkup will help you stay healthier.
Regular dental checkups keep plaque and tartar in line.
Even if you’re careful to brush and floss your teeth regularly, at least a little plaque and tartar will likely build up on your teeth over time. Plaque is a film of bacteria that collects on your teeth throughout the day or night. If it’s left on your teeth too long it will harden into tartar. This can easily happen if you miss a spot while you’re brushing your teeth or if you skip your oral hygiene routine. Brushing and flossing your teeth regularly at home removes plaque from your teeth, but tartar bonds to your enamel and can only be removed during a dental cleaning at your dentist’s office. Tartar is a safe haven for bacteria. When it’s allowed to sit on your teeth for extended periods of time, the bacteria in it can threaten your oral and overall health. It can lead to cavities, gum disease, and a wide range of larger health issues. As a result, it’s important to visit Dr. Lang every six months for complete checkups in Middletown, OH so that he can remove buildups of plaque and tartar and check to make sure your teeth and gums are healthy.
They decrease your likelihood of getting respiratory illnesses.
When you have poor oral health and there’s a buildup of bacteria in your mouth, you can actually breathe oral bacteria into your lungs. Once in your lungs, studies indicate that the bacteria increase your chances of suffering from a respiratory illness like pneumonia. If you already have a respiratory illness, such as pneumonia or chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, the bacteria can worsen your condition. As a result, taking care of your oral health and ensuring that you’re visiting Dr. Lang for a regular dental cleaning can keep you healthier, protecting you from respiratory diseases.
Regular dental checkups can help ensure your immune system can function at full strength.
Periodontitis is a severe form of gum disease that involves oral bacteria making their way underneath your gumline. There they attack the supporting structures of your teeth and enter your bloodstream. Although dangerous infections like endocarditis are sometimes sparked by oral bacteria, your immune system usually takes care of the bacteria before it can cause infections in the rest of your body—but at a price.
Until you get treatment for your periodontitis, oral bacteria will continue to make their way into your bloodstream, so your immune system is constantly fighting them off. This means that the body has to focus on fighting oral bacteria while fighting any other viruses and bugs you come in contact with regularly. It’s essentially fighting a battle on multiple fronts, and any strategist will tell you that’s not the best way to win a war. Something will fall through the cracks. You’re likely to end up getting sick with colds or coughs more often because your body simply can’t keep up. Visiting Dr. Lang for a regular checkup and dental cleaning will ensure that he catches signs of gum disease early and can treat it before it becomes severe. If you do have severe periodontitis, Dr. Lang can detect and treat it. This will remove the strain from your immune system and allow it to operate at full strength again.
Dental checkups reduce a wide range of long-term health risks.
As bacteria make their way into your bloodstream, the immune response causes constant, low-level inflammation throughout your entire body. This contributes to an increase in your risk of developing many overall health conditions, including high blood pressure, stroke, and heart disease. Periodontitis also makes it harder to control existing cases of diabetes and increases the risk of pregnant women giving birth to preterm or low-birthweight babies.
They include potentially life-saving oral cancer screenings.
During your regular, complete checkups in Middletown, OH, Dr. Lang will perform a quick, easy oral cancer screening. He will look for signs of lesions or discoloration in the mouth that may indicate the presence of cancer. If he finds anything suspicious, he may want to do further testing. Getting a regular oral cancer screening during your regular checkup is fast and easy—you likely won’t even notice it—but it can be life-saving. Just like any other type of cancer, early diagnosis of oral cancer is incredibly important and greatly impacts the survivability of the disease. If oral cancer is diagnosed at an early stage, the five-year survival rate is about 84%.
Dental checkups are easy, painless, and inexpensive.
We make going to your regular dental checkup as convenient as possible, working with your schedule to help you fit in your appointment every six months. During your appointment, your teeth will be cleaned, your mouth checked for signs of cavities, gum disease, and oral cancer, and you may receive digital X-rays. We’re careful to make your appointment as comfortable as possible using technology like digital X-rays.
Most dental insurance plans cover two regular checkups each year; if your insurance doesn’t offer complete coverage or you have a dental membership plan instead of traditional insurance, you’ll likely only have a very small co-pay for routine appointments. If you’re on a tight budget and worried about affording your co-pay or paying for a dental procedure, we offer financing options through CareCredit. Feel free to ask us about your financing options. We’ll do our best to help you find a solution that ensures you’re able to get the dental care you need. At the end of the day, however, going to the dentist for a regular checkup can easily pay for itself. It is much less expensive than treating issues like cavities and periodontitis because you’ve been avoiding going to your regular appointment. Since the visit is so easy, inexpensive, and provides so many health benefits, it’s worth it to make time in your busy schedule to visit every six months.
Your entire body is connected, so staying on top of your oral health will help you stay healthier as a whole—and being healthier will help your busy schedule feel more manageable. You’ll be able to function at your best and may even find the time to fully enjoy all of the surprises and joys that each new day has to throw at you. If you’re ready to find a “family dentist near me” and commit to scheduling a regular dental cleaning, feel free to contact our office at any time.
