Cleaning your teeth used to be easy when the dental offices were all open for business. Nowadays, most dentists are closed for non essential services due to CDC recommendations. This can mean a delay in your routine cleanings, but it should not be the end of clean teeth. In this article, we examine some resources to help you maintain your oral health and clean teeth.
Should You Go To The Dentist During COVID-19?
WebMD suggests that you stay away from the dentist unless it’s an emergency. This is because, “COVID-19 spreads through respiratory droplets. That’s what flies through the air when you cough or sneeze.”
As we all know, or at least should know, is that nothing beats a professional dental cleaning.
Here is some information from Delta Dental showing just how important dental cleanings are:
But what do you do when that is not an option? Self teeth cleaning. Keep reading to learn more about how you can properly clean your teeth yourself during the COVID-19 outbreak…
Properly Brushing Your Teeth
Let’s start with the basics… (This one’s especially important while in close quarters with others).
Here are some resources to help you ensure that you are properly brushing your teeth. After all, this is the first step in teeth cleaning:
Mouth Healthy has a helpful instructional video showing proper tooth brushing techniques based on ADA guidelines. (This is a good one for kids):
Evolve Health has some helpful tips for brushing your teeth right:
Here is a step by step guide to proper teeth brushing from Verywell Health, if video is not your style:
No Toothbrush?
PDO has some tips on how you can clean your teeth without a toothbrush:
Now that we have the basics out of the way, let’s take a look at properly cleaning between your teeth…
Cleaning Between Your Teeth
Here is a useful guide and tutorial from Sunstar on how to clean between your teeth. This is an important step that should not be overlooked:
Flossing is a great way to clean between your teeth, and here’s an article and video from Select Health, explaining why:
How long should you floss your teeth? Find out from United Concordia Dental here:
Your teeth are very important, but so are your gums. Let’s look into Gum Health now…
Keeping Your Gums Healthy During Coronavirus
The folks over at Healthline have some great tips to keep your gums healthy:
Now that your teeth are clean, let’s talk about how you can keep them clean…
Preventing Plaque Buildup
Here’s a good resource for preventing plaque buildup on your teeth from The Dental Office at Chestnut Hill:
Moving Forward With Clean Teeth & Healthy Mouth
Finally, check out this resource from HealthPartners with some things you need to know about your oral health during COVID-19:
Apps to Help Kids Brush Their Teeth The Right Way
During the quarantine, with schools closed, it is easy to fall out of the regular daily schedule and brushing teeth might get more of a hassle for kids to keep doing by themselves. Cavities are no fun and to keep brushing twice a day is even more important now than before.
We selected a few apps that the kids can use to help them time and walk through the process of brushing each section in the mouth, the fun way!
https://oralb.com/en-us/products/compare/disney-magic-timer-app
https://www.unitedconcordia.com/dental-insurance/member/chomper-chums/
https://apps.apple.com/us/app/brush-up-toothbrush-trainer/id967009000