With Ghosts and Goblins Soon to Come, Don't Let Cavities Follow

With all the little monsters and gremlins running around on Halloween night, be careful of the ones that run between your teeth. Learn which treats are best for your teeth and tips to reduce your risk of cavities.

 

Beware of the Mouth Monsters’ Favorite Treats!

After a night of candy collecting, kids love to dive into their stash and begin sorting. Before they get started, remember that not all sweet treats impact teeth in the same way. Download the grid below to help guide kids towards more tooth-friendly treats through sorting goodies according to which are best and worst for your kids’ pearly whites, including:

Finally, for those who are passing out tricks and treats, remember non-food favorites like temporary tattoos, stickers and glow-sticks are great alternatives.

Swish and Brush!

Let’s face it – most kids don’t look forward to Halloween for the sugar-free gum and dark chocolate. And that’s ok! If kids are indulging in any kind of candy, ensure they drink plenty of water after eating the treat. Encourage them to swish the water around in the mouth to help dislodge particles that can get stuck and encourage the Mouth Monsters to latch onto tiny teeth.
And whatever you do, don’t let your young ones go to bed before brushing and flossing if all sides of a tooth cannot be cleaned by brushing alone. It’s a busy, exciting time, but as is the case with every other day of the year, kids should brush their teeth for at least 2 minutes, twice a day.

Set a Limit!

Set the number of treats that your child can keep – you may even want to select a number they can keep from each of the three categories of the sorting grid – and encourage them to sell the rest to a local dentist candy buy-back program. Another option is a visit from the Halloween Fairy who comes in the night and takes extra candy.

What are your favorite candy limiting tips?

Originally posted by the AAPD.

Teeth of Children who Died in Famine Carry Hidden History

The Famine sculpture in Dublin. “Incremental dentine collagen analysis” can show what children’s diet was like during the Famine. File photographer: Frank Miller

 

The teeth of children who died during the Famine carry a hidden history of their short lives and tragic deaths. Chemical analysis of the teeth using a new technique can reveal diet and also the point when starvation set in.

The new method called “incremental dentine collagen analysis” involves looking for the signatures of chemicals such as nitrogen or carbon in growing teeth. These chemicals arise in the diet and are deposited in the dentine as the child’s teeth grow, explained Julia Beaumont of the University of Bradford who developed the technique with Janet Montgomery at the University of Durham.

They discussed the technique on Wednesday at the British Science Association Festival of Science in Bradford.

The scientists described their analysis of a young woman who lived 5,000 years ago and who died in her 20s. She developed severe rickets, a condition caused by lack of vitamin D. The analysis showed she was native to where she was found on the Hebridean island of Tiree and that although surrounded by water, she only ate terrestrial foods and none from the sea.

Dr Beaumont led a study published earlier this year of the baby teeth from children who died during the Famine of 1845-1852. The researchers used teeth of children buried at a workhouse in Kilkenny and another in London where many Famine victims were buried.

Baby teeth grow steadily from before birth up to age nine or 10, said Dr Beaumont, who worked for 30 years as a dentist before turning to research. The teeth are cut into slices and changes in the chemical signatures reveal information about what the children were eating.

“We know they were eating potatoes then you see the carbon balance changing when they started eating maize,” she said. But just before this signal the nitrogen values change, an indication that starvation had set in. Nitrogen deposition in the teeth rises as the child begins to recycle muscle and other tissues and they begin to waste away, Dr Beaumont said.

Powerful tool

The technique is a powerful tool in recreating conditions as they were in the past and was first described in a research paper in 2013. She can easily see periods in the child’s life down to nine months and in some conditions even as short as three months.

The age range is also extending given adult teeth continue to grow at the roots up to about age 23, she said.

It is even possible for her to look at what chemical levels were being deposited in infants’ teeth before birth. This gives information about the child but also the health of the baby’s mother.

The technique can reveal if the child had scurvy, a condition caused by lack of vitamin C or pellagra caused by lack of vitamin B.

She believes that the technique could help predict the future health of children born today.

“If we can show that baby teeth, which are lost naturally, provide markers for stress in the first months of life, we could have an important indicator of future health risks, such as diabetes and heart disease,” she said.

The original article can be found here.

Happy Birthday Dudley!

Today is Dudley the Dinosaur's 25th birthday! Many of you may know Dudley from when Dr. Leaf visited your school. Dudley knows all kinds of things about going to the dentist. Help us celebrate his birthday by watching this video or by coloring a special birthday coloring page.

Dudley the Dinosaur Coloring Page

Dudley the Dinosaur Video

Tooth Fairy Traditions!

The tooth fairy likes to reward children for clean, lost baby teeth in a variety of ways. Check out some fun tooth fairy traditions to try in your home!

A visit from the tooth fairy can be a fun tradition to start once your child begins to lose his or her baby teeth. Families have different traditions related to tooth fairy visits. Have you and your children ever wondered what the tooth fairy does at your friends’ houses? Here are a couple fun tooth fairy traditions:

• Use a “tooth fairy dish” if your child is a light sleeper to leave the tooth by the child’s bed at night for the tooth fairy.
• A sprinkling of fairy dust or glitter on the windowsill or leading up to the door shows where the tooth fairy flew in.
• Leave a note for the tooth fairy… she might write back in 3-point font on a tiny scroll tied with floss!
• The tooth fairy likes to give gold dollars for the cleanest and shiniest teeth because she uses them to build a big castle in the sky. It pays to brush every morning and night!
• Instead of money, some children might find a fun toothbrush featuring their favorite cartoon character who will help remind them to keep the rest of those little teeth healthy.
• Try attaching a doll house door to the wall next to your child’s bed so the tooth fairy knows where to fly in the room.

Losing the first baby tooth is a big deal! There are plenty of ways to celebrate reaching this big kid milestone. Something unique, such as a $2 bill or small toy is a fun way to commemorate that first tooth. Or, a small personalized tooth box is a fun and useful gift for future tooth fairy visits!

What is your favorite tooth fairy tradition? Be sure to tell us in the comments below!

Originally posted by the AAPD.

A Big Century for Little Teeth

Healthy Teeth, Healthy Body

Francesco D’Aiuto, senior lecturer at the Eastman Dental Institute in London, chatted with The Guardian about what he refers to as the the "mouth-body connection," or the idea that a healthy body is strongly correlated with good dental hygiene. 

“The mouth is not disconnected from the rest of the body,” he explained. "People should not underestimate what the body senses when the mouth is neglected."

What exactly is D'Aiuto referring to when he talks about neglecting the mouth? Gum disease, for one, which ranges from minor inflammation of the gums to major damage to the gums and bones caused by plaque and tartar buildup, according to the National Institute of Dental and Craniofacial Research.

"In the middle of the day, [run your tongue] across your teeth right around the gum line. You'll find something sticky or fuzzy," Deepinder "Ruchi" Sahota, a dentist in Fremont, California, and a spokesperson for the American Dental Association, previously told The Huffington Post. "That's plaque."

The longer that plaque stays in place, the more likely it is to become tartar -- that hard, yellow material between your teeth that can cause inflammation and bleeding. While brushing your teeth disrupts the bacteria and gets rid of plaque before it can become tartar, once you've skipped out on brushing one too many times, your toothbrush may not be enough to protect you once you get gum disease.

Tartar build up can only be removed by a dental professional.

“When you have gum disease, the gums are effectively ulcerated inside, so they’re not forming a tight seal," Francis Hughes, a professor of periodontology at King’s College London, told The Guardian. "Every time you eat or brush your teeth, it pushes bacteria into the body and triggers inflammation."And it doesn't end with gum disease. Studies have shown that good dental hygiene is linked to lower risk of stroke and heart disease, pneumonia, unhealthy pregnancy, Alzheimers and erectile dysfunction. 

That's a long and scary list of conditions. Not totally sure that you're taking good enough care of your teeth? We'll keep it brief, but make sure your toothbrush has soft bristles and that you're not brushing too hard, as that can cause abrasions. Brush for a solid 2-3 minutes gently massaging your gums. Don't forget to floss regularly and use a fluoridated toothpaste.  

Reposted from Huffington Post.

Evidence of Rudimentary Dentistry from 14,000 Years Ago

Ancient humans were performing rudimentary dentistry on each other 14,000 years ago, Italian scientists have discovered – 5,000 years earlier than previously thought.

Researchers believe they have found evidence of an infected tooth being treated, probably with a sharp piece of flint, after studying the 14,000-year-old skeleton of a prehistoric man found in the Dolomites.

It was known that early humans used toothpicks made from wood or bone for basic dental hygiene, digging out scraps of meat or fibre from between their teeth.

But this discovery reveals a more sophisticated element of Palaeolithic dentistry.

A team from the universities of Ferrara and Bologna analysed a molar from the skull of the 25-year-old hunter-gatherer, whose remains were found in a valley near the town of Belluno in the Dolomites in 1988.

The skeleton, found in a rock shelter, was laid in a shallow pit, surrounded by the hunter’s most prized possessions – a flint knife, a stone used as a hammer, a flint blade and a sharp piece of bone.

The skeleton was unusually well-preserved, and the burial mound was marked with stones decorated with designs painted in red ochre.

The scientists analysed one of the man’s molars and found evidence that it had once been infected and that rotten material had been dug out of the tooth with the aid of a stone implement, most likely a shard of flint.

The results “have important implications for our knowledge of the earliest forms of dentistry”, the scientists said in a statement.

“What the results show is that the tooth represents the oldest evidence of intervention on a cavity,” Stefano Benazzi, the leader of the research group, told an Italian newspaper, Il Resto del Carlino.

“The discovery suggests, moreover, that in the Upper Palaeolithic era, humans were aware of the damaging effects of cavity infections and of the necessity of treating them, using stone instruments to remove the infected material and to clean out the cavity.”

The discovery represented “the development, albeit incipient, of dental surgery practices,” said his colleague Marco Peresani, from Ferrara University.

This article was originally posted on Telegraph News.