The truth about oral health

MYTH Only the sugar in sweets, cakes, fizzy drinks and chocolate is bad for my teeth.

FACT While all these foods are bad for your teeth (and your general health), dried fruit, fruit juice and honey contain natural sugars that can cause tooth decay. Limit the amount of these foods that you eat, don't have them between meals and brush your teeth twice a day.

MYTH There's no need to brush milk teeth.

FACT Even though your child will lose their milk teeth, they still have to be brushed. Establishing good habits early in life helps ensure life-long dental health. Brush your baby's teeth twice daily from the moment their first tooth cuts through.

MYTH I'll need false teeth when I'm older.

FACT Improvements in dental hygiene mean that more of us keep our natural teeth into old age.

MYTH Bad breath is only caused by not brushing your teeth properly.

FACT While 85-90% of halitosis (bad breath) is caused by bad oral hygiene, smoking, eating certain foods and (in rare cases) an underlying disease can also make your breath smell bad. Regular brushing, flossing, eating and drinking healthily, and taking plenty of exercise are the best ways to avoid bad breath.

MYTH Medication cures toothache  

FACT: Medication might temporarily relief toothache but does not cure toothache. The only way to cure a toothache is to find the cause and treat that. I have been surprised by many home remedies which are promoted as cures for toothache. These can do more harm than good. Got a toothache? Visit the dentist.

MYTH: Tooth extraction is painful

FACT: Modern medicine has enabled the dentist to use effective local anesthetics to render least amount of pain to the patients. The local anesthetic injection desensitizes a patient to pain during an extraction so that the tooth can be removed without much discomfort during extraction. Note that there can be some pain in extractions of impacted tooth, tooth with dilacerated roots and other complications. I personally had a mesio-angular impacted tooth which was below the mandibular canal (which basically means a complicated extraction) removed with out any conceivable pain.