Important Vitamins and Minerals for Dental Health

Certain vitamins and minerals play a very important role in dental health. Eating healthy diet containing essential nutrients imparts many benefits such as clearing away bacteria and helping bones and tissues to fight off infections. Few vitamins also helps to decrease the chances of having gum disease, mouth sores and tooth decay.

Following are few vitamins and minerals that provide certain benefits to your dental health:

• Vitamin A: This vitamin helps to keep the mouth tissues healthy. It maintains sufficient flow of saliva that washes away bacteria and harmful substances from your mouth.

• Calcium: As your jaw and teeth are made up of calcium, consuming sufficient amount of calcium on a regular basis helps to keep your jaw and teeth enamel healthy and strong. Calcium deficiency can increase the risk of tooth decay and gum disease.

• Iron: This component helps to transport oxygen through out your body so consuming in little amount can cause mouth sores or tongue inflammation. Also iron deficiency may also lead to infections due to the build up of bacteria in the mouth due to insufficient flow of oxygen inside the body.

• Vitamin B3: Vitamin B3 helps your body to convert food in to energy and enhances functioning of your nervous system. Consuming little of this vitamin affects your oral health by causing mouth sores ad bad breath

• Zinc: This vitamin helps to prevent the build up of plaque and growth of bacteria along your gum line.

• Vitamin B12 & B2: By consuming sufficient amounts of vitamin B2 and B12 the risk of developing painful open canker sores in your mouth can be reduced.

• Vitamin C: This vitamin helps to maintain healthy teeth and prevent gingivitis and its deficiency may cause bleeding gums and loose teeth.

• Vitamin D: Vitamin D should be taken along with foods that contain high amounts of  calcium as it mainly deals with helping your body to absorb calcium. Inadequacy of vitamin D may lead to burning mouth syndrome (bitter, metallic taste and dryness in mouth).

• Magnesium: This mineral helps to prevent cavity formation and build strong enamel for your teeth.

Maintaining a healthy diet rich in grains, protein meats and a combination of vegetables and fruits benefits your over all health.
Every individual should include nutrients and minerals in their daily diet in order for the body to resist infection. The presence of either too little or too much of any component can impart harmful effects particularly on teeth and mouth and may contribute to infection and oral diseases.

A healthy way to consume the above mentioned nutrients can be through eating healthy foods and vitamins to ensure you remain happy and healthy.

Side Effects of Oral Cancer Treatment

Side effects are the undesirable effects in body due to usage of drugs or medical surgeries. Side effects are common in oral cancer treatment as the healthy tissue or cells also affected. Side effects are vary from person to person and type of treatment  given.

Side effects of surgery
Side effects of oral cancer surgery varies depends on the site of surgery. The side effects are

• Pain at the site of surgery due to removal of tissue
• Swelling of face
• If surgery is on tongue or jaw leads to difficulty in eating and talking
• Infection at the site of surgery
• Bleeding from the site of surgery.

Side effects of radiation therapy
Side effects of radiation therapy on oral cavity depends on the amount of radiation given. The more exposure to the radiation, the more will be the side effects.

• Dry mouth is common in radiation therapy. It is due to the permanent damage of salivary glands. Lack of saliva production leads to dental infections like dental decay.

• Sore mouth is painful ulcers on mouth after radiation therapy. Using local anesthetic mouth rinses helps to numb the area or pain killers relieve from pain.

• Gum bleeding can be controlled by maintaining oral hygiene. Avoid tooth picks to control it.

• Delays healing time as radiation therapy makes the tissue hard to heal.

• Restricted jaw movement happens in radiation therapy. It affects the jaw muscle and makes it difficult to open mouth. This can be treated by doing jaw exercises and speech therapy.

• Damage of thyroid and pituitary gland: During radiation therapy, damage of thyroid and pituitary takes place. Lack of thyroid and pituitary hormones leads to gain in weight and tiredness. This can be corrected by medicines.

• Redness of skin at the site of radiation can be treated by maintaining hygiene.

• Tiredness after radiation therapy is seen in many patients.

• Loss of taste sense after radiation therapy on head and neck cancer. A metallic taste in mouth is common and causes lack of apatite.

• Loss of smell sense is due to the radiation on oral cavity, which affects nose. Dryness of nose leads to decrease in the smell sense.

• Voice changes varies depending on the site of area gets affected by radiation. It is temporary and you can regain your voice  after a few days.

Side effects of chemotherapy
Side effects of chemotherapy are same as the radiation therapy like infection, dryness of mouth and bleeding gums. Side effects of chemotherapy depends on the amount of dose taken. Other side effects include:

• Blood cells: Chemotherapy affects bone marrow and decreases the production of blood cells. Due to lack of enough blood cells, poor oxygen supply leads to infections

• Hair loss: Chemotherapy affects hair to become thin. Hair on scalp and eye brows and eye lashes fall down. But this can regain once the treatment is completed.

• Skin: Chemotherapy also affects the skin. The skin becomes dry and sensitive to sun. Rashes and irritation of skin

• Nails: Nails become dry and brittle.

• Digestive system: Chemotherapy affects digestive system and leads to side effects of nausea, vomiting. Some tablets irritates bowl.

• Nerve damage: Chemotherapy damages nerves on hands and legs. This leads to numbness or sharp pain in hand and legs.

• Kidney, liver and lungs: Some chemotherapy drugs alters the functioning of these organs.

Ultrasonic Dental Cleaning Or Traditional Method of Cleaning?

Technology has emerged in every field from small to big. No matter how efficient are traditional methods, technology will be evolving day by day in your life. It will have a great impact even though you don't want it to happen. But it is beneficial in one point of view because it is making the people's work easy and efficient in all aspects.

Ultrasonic dental cleaning
In dentistry cleaning methods are traditional till now but with the invent of ultra sonic dental cleaning the dentists burden is reduced. This is very useful for the people who want to keep their teeth and gum healthy all the time. So, people meet the dentist for a regular dental check up.

During this procedure, if the dentist detects any tartar or scrap left on your teeth, they will peroform conventional scaling and root planing methods to remove that scrap but it takes more time for the dentist, and it is also done by hand. Today, the dentist's job has become easier with this ultra sonic dental cleaning technique.

Process of cleaning using ultrasonic scaler
Ultra sonic dental cleaning uses an instrument called ultrasonic scaler. During the treatment this ultra sonic scaler make some vibration and sound wave that crushes and removes the deposited calculus on your teeth and also it crates some shock waves that take away bacterial cells. It also washes and flushes the pockets and exposed root surface by sending the cool water. This water also reduces the heat caused by the vibrations. With this technique the teeth will be more clean and have fresh gums.

Difference between ultrasonic cleaning technique and conventional method

• Ultrasonic cleaning are more effective in cleaning corner of teeth than the traditional method.
• Ultrasonic sclaer can penetrate deeper in to periodontal pockets than manual instruments.
• Ultrasonic scaler takes  less time than using manual instruments.
• Conventional hand-held scaler creates discomfort but this is not the case with ultrasonic cleaning.
• Conventional scalers are easy to use by any dentist but ultrasonic scalers must be performed under the supervision of the dentist who are specialized using this ultrasonic scalers.
• Ultrasonic scaler produces sound waves rather the conventional method this may be option for all patients with pacemakers.
• The scaling done with ultrasonic is painless and comfortable.
• Ultrasonic technique is effective in detecting the early stages of gum and periodontal diseases, and it removes all calculus at once and saves time compared to traditional method.

What are the Different Types of Tooth Extraction

If a tooth is lost, decayed, broken or damaged due to an injury, there is a necessity of extracting a tooth by the dentist. Sometimes in the treatment of braces are also needed for extraction of teeth. But this tooth extraction should be removed without pain and a minimum trauma to the surrounding tissues should be done so that it should not be harmful to the tooth root. Simple tooth extraction is done by a general dentist and surgical tooth extraction is done by the oral surgeon. Tooth extraction procedure will remove the infected tooth from the oral cavity and will prevent the spread of infection or damage to the tooth.

There are two types of tooth extractions:
1)Simple tooth extraction.
2)Surgical tooth extraction.

A closed or forceps or simple tooth extraction is done by the general dentist. It is performed on a tooth that can be seen in the mouth. With the use of some instruments, hand forceps, injections (local anesthetic) and with or without drugs tooth are pulled out and extracted.

Open or surgical or flap tooth extraction is done by the oral surgeons or some times general dentists. It involves cutting of gums in the mouths to extract the teeth because teeth cannot be seen easily in the mouth. Some teeth may be in developing state or some may have broken off at the gum line or some may not have come in yet. So to remove this kind of teeth, the dentist or oral surgeon must cut and pull back the gums which involves bone removing or a piece of teeth. In this method patient is given local anesthesia and can have conscious sedation.