The Importance of Dental Hygiene

When a patient comes in, I'm usually the first one they see, so my job is to make them feel at ease. What I do is I make them feel comfortable, I introduce myself. I tell them what I'm going to do before I do it. I explain to them the importance of being here and why they should have their teeth cleaned. I mean, just overall, a healthy mouth is a healthy body because without good gums, without a healthy mouth, what happens is the plaque can get into the arteries, into the heart, and that's not good. It affects you with diabetes, it all connects. Everything is connected with the mouth, so if you have that lot of bacteria in your mouth, and you're not keeping your mouth clean, you start losing teeth. I teach them how to keep their mouth clean. You have to floss. You have to brush because if you have plaque in your mouth, you don't have a clean healthy mouth. Gingivitis is when a patient comes in with bleeding gums and puffiness. At that stage, what I do is it's easy. You just clean their teeth, show them how to brush, floss, how to take care of them, and they're good. Periodontal disease is when you start to lose bone, so you don't want to get to that stage because once your bone is gone, it's gone. So now, when a patient comes in, we have to try to keep whatever bone they have healthy. So that's why we have the patients come in, I do a deep scaling on them. I get all the bacteria out, get all the tartar out that has accumulated, and hope that we stop the disease. We have a lot of patients that come in, too, for cosmetics, and that's what I love. I love when a patient comes in, and they leave feeling good. When a patient comes in, a lot of times, I even have a [00:01:52] that I use for a lot of my patients because it takes the stain right off, and they love that. That's my favorite thing because what it does it just makes your teeth nice and white, and that's what a lot of patients want. They want to feel like they look good.