Threats to Teen Teeth: A Caution from Your Pediatric Dentist
If you are a parent to a teenager or your child is about to enter their early teens, you seem to bother your pediatric dentist a lot concerning your child’s dental care! This is perhaps because this is the time when changes such as a wisdom tooth extraction, evolution of permanent teeth and so on takes place. More importantly, teenage is that era of your child’s life when he or she needs to reach out to the world – appear for job interviews, take a leap in their academic career or socialize more. Therefore, we all the more seem to be concerned about our children’s teeth health especially in their teens.
In this post, there are three major teeth issues that mainly affect the adolescent ages. They are namely: Cavities, Sports injuries and tobacco addictions. Let us get into the details as to how these menaces are affecting the teens.
Teeth Cavities
Cavities are the most prevalent disease today, affecting a large chunk of children and teens in the United States. However, cavities are nearly cent percent preventable. You can make your teen fight cavities by adhering to the following:
- avoid eating and drinking too much sugar
- adding high fiber fruits and vegetables to their diet
- Brushing at least twice per day for two minutes and flossing once per day.
In addition to a proper oral care routine, your teen should have a dental health check up every six months such that any bacterial attack creeping in can be well prevented.
Sports Injuries
There are numerous cases every year of teeth being knocked out at the youth sporting events. Teenagers associated with any kind of sports should use mouth guards or mouth protectors which actually help to blow a cushion to the face thus minimizing the risk of breaking your teeth or injuring the lips, tongue and cheeks. Mouth guards effectively work to prevent tooth loss and other facial injuries.
Without a mouth guard, young athletes are susceptible to jaw damage, broken teeth, and even concussions. Especially if your child is playing any contact sport, then buy him or her a mouth guard that will provide adequate protection for their sport. In case you are unsure, check online too see if their sport requires or suggests using a mouth guard while playing the game.
Tobacco and Nicotine Addiction
Given the fact that 90% of adult smokers began smoking in their teens, tobacco is the key factor behind most kinds of dental damages. Also, each day more than 3,200 Americans younger than 18, try their first cigarette. The prime reason behind bookmarking tobacco as harmful is that, it can lead to oral cancers, periodontal diseases, delayed healing after any oral procedure, a bad breath, stained teeth and gums and so on. It may even affect your oral health such that your ability to smell and taste is heavily damaged! To top it all, the use of e-cigarettes and nicotine vaporizers among teens is on an ever increasing trend, and they are equally terrible for teeth!
It is highly recommended that teens should stay in an environment where smoking is not a very normal affair. They should be discouraged from indulging in the same too. It has been observed that such teenagers are less addicted to tobacco and smoking than others.
While the other issues can be handled fairly, if you are not able to deal with your child’s wrong addictions or are skeptical about them falling a prey to these any moment, you could seek the advice of your pediatric dentist. Apart from regular dental care, it needs to be instilled in the teens mind that his or her smile is very important for the future days to come and therefore needs to be taken proper care of.
