Our eating, drinking, and hygiene habits often change in the summer. That is not necessarily a bad thing, but we do need to be mindful of making choices that are healthy and not harmful for our teeth during these months. Below, we have summarized two, online ADA MouthHealthy articles that provide excellent advice on how to best care for our mouths in these warmer months.
The ADA MouthHealthy article entitled, “7 MouthHealthy Tips for Your Summer Soiree” provides the following summer tips:
Avoid the Harmful Crunch:
Snacks like chips often settle in the grooves of your teeth. The ADA article instead recommends fruits and veggies like applies, pears, carrots, celery, and raw broccoli, all of which act as natural toothbrushes. They both scrub build-up and stimulate saliva to wash away food!
Avoid Toothpicks:
The article also cautions to avoid toothpicks. Toothpicks, it says, can pierce gums or cause splinters, which could give bacteria a chance to invade. Instead, it recommends soft and flexible plaque removers.
Drink Water, Water, and More Water:
Water is the very best thing you can drink in the summer. On the contrary,
soda and sports drinks are some of the worst for your teeth. These drinks eat away at your teeth, cause dry mouth, and are full of sugar. At the same time, the article cautions that there are acids in water infused with citrus fruits, so it advises to go easy on those.
Use Crushed, Not Cubed Ice:
Most of us love an ice-cold drink on a hot day, but chewing on ice can lead to broken teeth and damaged tooth enamel. That is why the article recommends crushed and not cubed ice.
ADA MouthHealthy article entitled, “Keep Family Smiles Healthy All Summer Long” adds the following helpful advice:
Avoid Continuous Snacking:
When we continually snack, it doesn’t give our saliva the chance to naturally cleanse our mouths, because it is saliva that both washes away leftover food and strengthens the structure of our teeth. That is why the article recommends that we allow our kids to tell us when they are hungry versus offering them food throughout the day.
Maintain Your Brushing/Flossing Routine:
Our changing summer schedules can make it harder to stick to our usual brushing and flossing routine. It is important to remember that kids and adults should brush with fluoride toothpaste for two minutes twice a day, every day. It is also crucial to floss daily. Kids need to be reminded to floss between any two teeth that touch. And it is recommended that parents help kids up until ten-years-old to floss. This is the point at which their motor skills are more fully developed.
Summer is definitely a time of year to relax. That said, we don’t want to develop habits in the process that could be harmful to our teeth. If you follow the above ADA recommendations, as well as stick to a regular brushing and flossing routine, you can have both a fun and mouth healthy summer!
References:
7 MouthHealthy Tips for Your Summer Soiree. ADA MouthHealthy. https://www.mouthhealthy.org/summer-entertaining. Acccessed July 5, 2023.
Keep Family Smiles Healthy All Summer Long. ADA MouthHealthy. https://www.mouthhealthy.org/life-stages/babies-and-kids/3-tips-for-healthy-summer-smiles. Accessed July 5, 2023.