The holiday season usually means a mixture of happiness, more time with family and friends, and big meals shared by all. During this time, the last thing on your mind is how each of these meals can potentially harm your oral health for the long term. Instead of living in fear of these meals potentially ruining your perfect oral health streak, here are some of our favorite tips to help you safely navigate the holiday season.
Incorporate Teeth-Friendly Foods Into the Festivities
During holiday meals, acidic foods and drinks get mixed in with various sweets to create a minefield of potential oral health hazards. While you shouldn’t completely abstain from indulging a little bit during these gatherings, incorporating more teeth-friendly foods into your diet to provide the necessary balance becomes essential.
Incorporating fruits and crunchy vegetables into your holiday meals can provide your teeth with the essential nutrients they need to stay healthy. Additionally, eating whole grains and drinking plenty of water can give a substantial boost to your oral health.
Avoid These Unfriendly Dental Foods
Sugary sweet treats, hard candies, and sticky treats might be part and parcel of your holiday traditions, but they can cause havoc on your dental health. While these foods should be avoided or kept to a bare minimum all year round, they become more common and seemingly unavoidable during the holidays. Picking sugar-free alternatives can prove helpful and might be more successful than trying to avoid the temptation altogether this year.
Stick to Your Dental Routine
Everyone’s schedule around the holidays is hectic. You’re running around trying to hit everything on your shopping list, and then when it’s time to host, you have a mountain of things to get done. In the season’s chaos, it can feel easy for you to trim certain things from your daily routine to save time and get the holiday checklist in order. However, it’s imperative to ensure you don’t let good oral hygiene habits fall by the wayside.
Practicing good dental care during the busy holiday season means you can stay on top of any food particles left behind in your teeth, help you continue to protect your tooth enamel, and save you from expensive dental procedures down the road.
Don’t Forget About Hydration
Water remains one of the essential building blocks of life — so it shouldn’t come as a surprise it plays a significant role in protecting your teeth. Water naturally contains fluoride, which helps strengthen your enamel. Additionally, when compared to sugary soft drinks, water provides you with a wealth of nutritional benefits that soda simply cannot match during the holidays.
Schedule Your Dental Visits
For many patients, knowing there is a problem with their teeth remains the first step towards taking the necessary precautions to protect their teeth. The best way to know your dental health is to see your dentist regularly. If you’re concerned that this holiday season can prove especially dangerous for your teeth, schedule a visit with your favorite dental practice in Mercer County, NJ, Hamilton Dental, to better understand what you need to do.
If you’re looking to take better care of your children’s teeth, scheduling a children’s dentist checkup in Burlington County, NJ, can help! See how you and your children’s dental health looks before the holiday parties start; schedule your visit with our team today!
