Cavities

A cavity is literally a hole in your tooth. Cavities are caused exclusively by plaque. Plaque is a biofilm that is made of bacteria. Most bacteria in our body is beneficial for us. However, some bacteria in our mouths ingest sugars and excrete acid and it is this acid that is the real problem. If we took out one of your teeth and placed it into a vat of acid, it would dissolve. And this is what is happening to your tooth when you get a cavity, but in a small area. I often tell patients, if you had no bacteria in your mouth, you could literally dip your toothbrush in sugar and brush your teeth and you would not get a cavity!

So this bacteria grows on your tooth, and we want to get it off, so we brush to remove it from most of the surfaces on our teeth. Why do we want you to floss? Most of us have pretty small spaces between our teeth and our toothbrush bristles simply cannot get between our teeth to clean that area. So we need to help the toothbrush out. So flossing simply scrapes the plaque off from between your teeth.

Proper brushing and flossing will prevent cavities in our teeth. End of story.

Cleaning your teeth

So we ask you to brush and floss in the morning and at night before you go to bed. Why twice? Why not three times? Why not just once? Well, it takes 24 hours for the bacteria in your mouth to develop a colony large enough to damage your teeth, so by brushing them twice a day you greatly reduce the chance of allowing the bacteria to build up. Makes sense right?

I often tell people, we brush in the morning so people don’t have to smell our stinky breath, but at night is the most important time. For sure we do not want to go to bed with food on our teeth. At night our saliva slows down and saliva protects our teeth when they are damaged from acid. So if you’re not going to bed with clean teeth, then the bacteria runs wild and your teeth are not as protected! And it gets worse as we age. Our saliva slows down, and if you happen to be one of the hundreds of millions of Americans who takes some sort of medication it can be worse. A huge number of medications can cause dry mouth, which can leave your teeth even more unprotected. The bottom line here is, go to bed with clean teeth every night!