Preventive Dentistry: Your first line of defense for a healthy smile

Our smiles are among our most important assets. One of the first things a stranger notices about you is likely to be your smile.

Routine exams and cleanings with the best dentists in The Colony can go far to protect you from negative outcomes like gum disease and tooth loss. Preventive dentistry helps to maintain an attractive, healthy smile.

Professional cleanings, or prophylaxis, are an important component of preventive dentistry. Using specialized instruments, a dental hygienist is able to clean your teeth much more thoroughly than you can through regular brushing and flossing. The dental hygienist can also offer you instruction to make sure that you are using proper technique while brushing and flossing at home.

The dental exam is also at the core of preventive dentistry. At these visits, your dentist will thoroughly examine all of the structures of your mouth, looking for signs of decay, gum disease and even oral cancer.

This is another way in which the six-month interval can prove valuable to patients. When a dentist can identify such issues at an earlier stage, they are more treatable and the chances of a good outcome are greater.

Allowing such problems to progress may necessitate a more complex treatment.

Merely establishing a relationship with a dentist is important to your oral health, as well. When your dentist knows your baseline, it is also easier to detect changes that indicate oral diseases.

In addition to keeping up with their semiannual appointments, patients are responsible for a major aspect of preventive dentistry in their home oral hygiene effort. A routine of twice-daily brushing and daily flossing goes a long way toward preventing major problems. Even if you get a professional cleaning every six months, it would be hard to undo the damage left behind by a lack of good home oral hygiene habits.

Good oral health begins with preventive dentistry, and scheduling dental appointments every six months for cleanings and checkups can help you avoid visits to the dentist for more invasive interventions.