How to keep your teeth healthy, clean & strong: 16 tips

how to keep your teeth healthy

Prevention is considered the best medicine for your own smile. Though crowns, fillings and professional whitening could make your pearls stronger and brighter, it is still better and of course, cheaper to avoid cavities as well as stain in the first place, by flossing, brushing, and eating right. What foods you eat affects strongly on your teeth. Fortunately, there are some types of foods that can help strengthen and whiten your teeth in such an all-natural way. On the other hand, there are some types of foods which are not good for the human teeth and acknowledging what the best foods for your teeth are always a good step to protein your pearls from staining and damaging. Here we at VKool.com give you nutrition tips on how to keep your teeth healthy, clean and strong. Just take a look! 

I. How To Keep Your Teeth Healthy – Worst Foods For Your Teeth

1. Citrus Fruit 
citrus fruit

Citrus fruits and juices, which are rich sources of vitamin C as well as other nutrients, are great for you in different aspects, yet not when it comes to your teeth.

Lemon juice and grapefruit, in particular, are really high in acidic and might erode tooth enamel in the long term. Among citrus fruits, orange causes the least damage.

Orange juice is actually less acidic, and you can get benefits from orange in many levels, yet brush and floss as recommended.

2. Chewy Candy

chewy candy

The sticker a candy, the worse it tends to be for the teeth. Those extra chewy-candies such as caramels, taffy, or Jujyfruits might stick to teeth for a long time, thereby allowing the bacteria in the mouth to feast leisurely on the deposited sugar. In fact, bacteria burns sugar for making acid that dissolves a protective layer of tooth enamel and leads to cavities.

Those candies which are chewy, acidic and sugary delivers a triple whammy of negatives as they carry their own payload of erosive acid, aside from that produced by the interaction of bacteria and sugar.

3. Hard Candy

hard candy

The next tip on how to keep your teeth healthy is to avoid hard candy. Hard candies like Jolly Ranchers do not cling to the human teeth as chewy candy does, yet they have their own negative effects. In fact, hard candy might dissolve slowly and then saturate the mouth for a few minutes at a time, allowing bacteria to have more times to manufacture harmful acid, unlike those chocolate-based sweets that are chewed fast and wash away easily. Even worse, a lot of hard candies are flavored with the citric acid.

4. Pickles

Pickles

In reality, acid is necessary to the pickling process; thus, it gives the pickles their salty, sour taste. Also, acid is the culprit making pickles a potential dangerousness for tooth enamel.

5. Soda

Soda

It is rather obvious that consuming too many sugary sodas could breed cavities. However, the less well-known thing is that the acids in the carbonated soft drinks tend to harm the human teeth more than sugar. And, even sugar-free diet sodas such as Diet Coke as well as Diet Pepsi that both include phosphoric acid and citric acid might erode enamel if taken in big doses.

In case you could not do without soda, then you had better drink it during the meal, instead of sipping it all day long. That way, the food will neutralize the acid in sodas. The exposing of time your teeth to the acid is also shorter.

6. Sport Drinks 

sport drinks

Want to eat something fizzy and sweet, sport drinks or energy drinks might be the choice of most people, and also a good alternative to soda. However, Red Bull or Gatorade will not do your lovely teeth any favor, either. These drinks are too acidic and are really potentially damaging to your teeth.

7. Wine

Wine

The rule of thumb is that: anything which will get people yelled at if they spill it on the white table cloth will stain their teeth. Thus, red wine containing the substances called chromogens which produce those tooth-discoloring pigments. Moreover, in red wine, there is a substance named tannins which tend to dry out your mouth and make your teeth sticky, thereby worsening stains.

Even, the white wine might contribute enormously to staining problem. Whites and reds both include erosive acid, thereby helping stains from other drinks and foods to penetrate much more deeply.

8. Crackers 

Crackers

Want to know how to keep your teeth healthy? Avoid consuming crackers. Refined carbohydrates within saltines as well as mother other kinds of crackers may transform into sugar within the mouth so fast, supplying fodder for the cavity-building bacteria. Furthermore, crackers also turn to be mushy if chewed, transforming into a paste-like goop which builds up in the lodges and molars between teeth.

Therefore, if you regularly binge on crackers, then you might have to deal with teeth problem, yet consuming them in the right amount will be not likely to lead to any long term concerns, as long as you brush and floss regularly. Normally, regular and good oral hygiene can compensate for almost anything.

9. Coffee

Coffee

The coffee mug has stubborn brown stains that accumulate inside, thereby drinking coffee may stain the teeth over the time. Even, it is proven that the stains caused by coffee appear more persistent than those resulted from tobacco. Additionally, teeth with those heavy coffee stains might be sticky and prone to attract food particles as well as bacteria easily.

10. Tea

Tea

Tea might seem like the kinder, gentler cousin of coffee, but that is not good for your teeth. Consuming black tea for a long time, without good oral hygiene, might stain the teeth more than consuming coffee. Similar to red wine, the black tea tends to have the high content of tannin, promoting staining.

And, not surprising, those teas like green tea, herbal tea, and white tea, are less high in tannins; thus, they are not likely to discolor the teeth. However, there is another drawback of herbal tea which not many people know. Herbal teas can erode dental enamel more than black tea can.

11. Dried Fruits And Honey

dried fruits and honey

In fact, honey is tasty, yet if consumed too frequently, it might result in tooth decay. The same impact goes for those dried fruits such as raisins, pineapple, and apricots, and so on. Dried fruit consists of high concentrated sugars and the gummy-texture of dried fruit could cling to the teeth similar to candy.

II. How To Keep Your Teeth Healthy – Best Foods For Your Teeth

1. Sugarless Gum

sugarless gum

If you want to enjoy some gums but do not want their negative sugary impacts on the teeth, then opt for sugar-free gum. It can clean your teeth by stimulating the saliva production. Saliva is a natural way to wash away acids manufactured by the bacteria within your mouth, and it also bathes your teeth in the bone-strengthening calcium as well as phosphate. Furthermore, many varieties of the sugarless gum are well sweetened with an alcohol named xylitol which reduces bacteria effectively.

Nevertheless, you should opt for mint flavors as it is shown that the acid made use of for creating certain fruit flavors might damage teeth, although just slightly.

2. Water

Water

Similar to saliva, water will help wash out sugars as well as acid off the teeth. Also, it includes fluoride which is a mineral protecting against tooth erosion and is found in many types of toothpaste and mouthwashes. Fluoride happens naturally in water, containing bottle spring water and the majority of tap water in United States is fortified with it.

3. Foods Rich In Fiber

foods rich in fiber

The leafy veggies and other foods high in fiber can improve digestion and promote healthy cholesterol levels. Also, they can bring good positive effects on the teeth as it requires chewing.

Consuming just a bowl of beans or spinach is like running your teeth via the car wash. Chewing generates saliva in general, and the food itself will scrub the teeth physically. Thus, if you want to know how to keep your teeth healthy, then you should go for foods rich in fiber.

4. Strawberries

Strawberries

Thanks to the content of enzyme named malic acid, which could be found in some whitening toothpastes, strawberries can whiten the teeth naturally. Thus, you can mash up strawberry or rub it on the teeth to make use of it. Then, leave the juice on the teeth for just 1 minute before rinsing it off with water. The fiber found in strawberries can act as the natural cleaner by eliminating bacteria from your mouth and teeth.

5. Nuts 

Nuts

A lot of nuts supply vitamins and minerals, which are helpful for your teeth. These nuts contain peanuts, which include vitamin D and calcium, almonds which consist of high levels of calcium that are beneficial for both gums and teeth, and walnuts which have folic acid, fiber, iron, magnesium, niacin, vitamin B6, vitamin E, potassium, and zinc.

These are top 16 nutrition tips on how to keep your teeth healthy, clean and strong that you should consider and take advantage of right instantly if you want to have a shiny smile. Aside from following a healthy diet plan, it is necessary for you to apply good oral hygiene. Almost tooth decay and gum disease could be prevented with good hygiene. Just several minutes of brushing and flossing are not a lot in return for a lifetime of healthy gums and teeth.

Leave your comments below this post if you have any idea about this topic of how to keep your teeth healthy, clean & strong or other home health topics introduced in VKool. We will respond all soon.

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