Strengthen Your Tooth Enamel: 3 Ways to Strengthen Your Teeth
Galleria of Smiles and Drs. Justin and Mehrdad Emami are dedicated to helping our patients build strong teeth. The stronger your teeth are, the more resistant to damage they are. This damage could be chips, cracks, or breaks. A strong, healthy tooth is even more resistant to tooth decay.
Preventive dental care from Galleria of Smiles is one of the core service offerings when it comes to keeping the teeth in your mouth strong. Call either our Tulsa office at 918-302-2401, or reach out to our Sand Springs office at 918-245-5976 to get help building up the strength of your teeth, and preparing them for the trials that lie ahead.
What Makes Up Your Tooth
Your tooth is made up of three layers. Each layer is important, and you need to know what they are in order to make sure you can take proper care of your teeth.
• Nerve and Pulp – The inner part of your tooth. This is the area of your tooth that should never see the light of day. Any type of dental injury that reaches to this level puts the life of your teeth in jeopardy. Damage to the nerve or the pulp can lead to pain, infection, and possible tooth loss. A root canal performed by Galleria of Smiles is one way to treat issues that arise with the inside of your tooth.
• Dentin – This layer is the middle layer of your tooth. It is far thicker than your dental enamel but far less hard. This area of your tooth is where the color of your tooth begins. Keeping this layer of your teeth is not terribly hard. Brush your teeth, go to Dr. Justin or Mehrdad Emami for your regular dental cleanings and exams, use fluoride, and you are probably going to be good.
• Enamel – This is the outer layer of your teeth, and the one that you have to make sure stays strong. Your dental enamel is as hard as concrete, which makes it great for chewing the food you eat, but also makes it easy for your teeth to damage each other.
Keeping your dental enamel strong, and avoiding anything that could injure it is important. Your dental enamel protects your dentin, which protects the pulp, which protects the nerve. All of them work together to give you a strong tooth. Now, you only get a certain amount of dental enamel. Once you lose it, it is lost forever.
3 Ways to Strengthen Your Enamel
Now that we know that dental enamel is so important, how can you go about keeping safe and strong (outside of your regular dental care at Galleria of Smiles)? Here are three things that you can do to keep your dental enamel in good condition.
• Avoid Demineralizing Carbs – Your dental enamel depends on certain minerals to remain strong and resist damage from sugars, bacteria, or outside injury. Here is a list of foods that contain carbs that will demineralize your teeth.
- Candy
- Cookies
- Soft Drinks
- Bread
- Crackers
- Sugary Breakfast Cereals
When the carbs in these foods mix with the bacteria in your mouth, they create acids that eat away at your dental enamel. They break down and consume the natural minerals that are the base building blocks for them. If you do eat these foods, make sure that you drink water following your meal, or even better brush your teeth to rid your mouth of sugars and carbs altogether.
• Remineralize Your Teeth – Fluoride is an important mineral for your teeth, and you can remineralize your enamel by using a fluoride toothpaste, mouthwash, or visiting Galleria of Smiles for your dental cleaning and exams. One of the services that are offered is the fluoride treatments to help rebuild the strength of the enamel you have left.
There are some foods that you can eat to remineralize your teeth as well. Cheese is one of those foods. The way you chew cheese stimulates saliva production that helps wash the harmful sugars away from your teeth and remineralize the enamel. Celery is another one of the foods that are supposed to help keep your teeth clear from sugars.
The ADA has a list of foods that they recommend for helping maintain a high level of dental health. You can also check out our earlier blog titled, “Dental Friendly Diets: 5 Foods NOT to Avoid” to find some foods that you should begin to include in your diet.
• Brush Your Teeth the Right Way – Correctly brushing your teeth will go a long way towards helping strengthen your dental enamel. Here is how to brush the right way.
- Brush 2x per day
- 45-degree angle with short strokes
- Brush for at least two minutes
- Brush all sides of your teeth and include your tongue
Let Galleria of Smiles Help You and Your Teeth Today
Call Galleria of Smiles for preventive dental health today. Our Tulsa campus can be reached at (918) 496-8010, while you can get in touch with Sand Springs center at (918) 245-5976.