Dental Hygiene: Benefits Of Dental Checks in Keeping Teeth Healthy In Children

Teeth are more than just facial appendages. They just don’t help in mastication, chewing and grinding food. They are crucial to overall health. Good oral health and looking after teeth begins early, just after the baby is born. This isn’t just because babies and toddlers have to eat, but several other reasons that compel dental growth. The child’s first visit to the dentist must be at age 1 year, when solid consumption increases and different foods are being experimented with.

If you as a parent have had only one thought in your mind and looked after your baby’s teeth because it helps them chew, below are more reasons to spend that much more time with them brushing every morning and night.

• Oral health directly reflects on overal health – It is not unusual for children to eat junk food, and yet parents rigorously brush teeth only to find teeth going bad and foul breath. Eating healthy ensures that the right foods are consumed that won’t get stuck in teeth, won’t cause bacterial infection or won’t damage the mouth. Therefore keeping teeth healthy in children, also means keeping them healthy overall and this can be motivation enough.
• Teeth define the jawline and face – Often times, as parents we don’t think about this. How crucial it is that good healthy teeth grow to define faces better. Many children suffer from cleft lip, cleft palate, irregular teeth, bad molars and there are times this skips attention till the damage is irreversible. The best thing you can do for your child is begin their dental checkups early, do it regularly and ensure great teeth that helps the growth of a good jaw and in turn defining a great face.
• Good teeth help in keeping gut healthy and well-functioning – Teeth are more than just great looking appendages. They help in chewing and mastication, breaking down food into smaller particles for easy digestion and assimilation. Improper breakdown and chewing directly affects the food that goes into the stomach and this in turn causes a whole host of problems which may not appear sooner but take time to develop.
• Oral health brings down medical costs – Taking care of teeth on an on-going basis is great not just for health, but to bring down spends for the family. Never visiting a dentist and managing like that, can throw up plenty of hidden problems at a later date when not addressed. As our experience shows, most caries and gum inflammation comes to us when children actually find eating difficult. This is all missed by parents and the treatment is often invasive and costly.

The benefits of good oral care in children far outweigh everything else. When it does really matter, in the long run visiting us at Small Bites is preventative and will do more for your child’s health than brushing can.