It’s beginning to look a lot like (an oral health-friendly) Christmas!

Christmas is a whole lot of things: fun and joyful, indulgent and relaxing... and not that good for anyone’s teeth. But you’ve likely already discovered that while your patients are happy to talk about their plans for sitting by the beach and unwrapping presents beneath the Christmas tree, they are far less inclined to think about, let alone talk about, the effect Christmas time might have on their oral health. If you push too hard, you run the risk of coming across like some sort of dental Scrooge but as a dental practitioner, you have a responsibility to ensure they look after their teeth and gums well all the time, no matter how many merry festive events beckon.

The good news is that you can have those important conversations with your patients without looking like the ultimate party-pooper and one key way to make that happen is to steer them to Teeth.org.au, the ADA’s consumer oral health education and promotion website. Launched on World Cavity-Free Future Day last year, Teeth.org.au contains a wealth of written oral health information as well as video, and audio, in the form of the ADA’s Watch Your Mouth podcast.

As well as tips on brushing, flossing, seeing their dentist and all the oral health essentials, Teeth.org.au has fantastic resources like the purchasable Tooth-friendly Treats Cookbook, which provides tooth-friendly sweet treat recipes that taste great and are good for a person’s oral health.

So, with everything beginning to look a lot like Christmas and all kinds of over-indulgence underway, what are some key topics on Teeth.org.au that are worth steering your patients towards with minimum Scrooge-ness and maximum oral health effect?
 

Understanding sugar

What many people don’t realise is that sugar is one of the biggest contributing factors to the development of tooth decay. This article introduces patients to various descriptors for sugar, the ones that make reading Nutrition Information Panels on food so tricky to read, and to the existence of hidden sugars which lurk in food that many people might assume are relatively harmless. Most people know they should limit their daily sugar intake but are hazy on the details so this piece explains what a recommended daily sugar intake is and why, especially during the festive season, it’s a good idea for people to observe it as much as they can and protect their teeth from the harmful effects of sugar.
 

Sports drinks

The holidays are a time of switching off and often switching to all kinds of fun outdoor activities like hiking, sports and time at the beach. It’s all too tempting when energy is being expended and people are getting thirsty in the hot summer sun to reach for sports drinks which are seen as the solution to thirstiness thanks to all-pervasive advertising campaigns. Tap water, is of course, far better for slaking thirst than anything else but simply telling people that may not have the immediate desired effect you’re after. So, this excellent piece reveals the added sugar that goes into these drinks so people can see how unhealthy they actually are.
 

Three tooth-friendly Christmas tips

It’s easy to get carried away at Christmas where the focus always seems to be ‘more being more’. But in the middle of all the eating and drinking, this piece reminds people that many festive foods and drinks can damage their teeth and that, even though there’s lots of tempting stuff around, it’s worth continuing to keep healthy eating and drinking habits over the holidays. That means avoiding mindless eating where possible, canning the candy cane which can cause teeth and fillings to break, and only using teeth to eat and smile for photos, and not for opening gifts or bottles.
 

Smoking and vaping

Where there’s alcohol, there’s often smoking or vaping, and with all the festive parties your patients will likely get invited to, there’s a good chance they will be smoking, which can cause severe gum disease, increase risk of oral cancer and even bad breath. Even vaping, which has been touted as the ‘healthy’ alternative to smoking, can have negative effects on a person’s oral health.
 

Alcohol and oral health

Your patients will generally know that alcohol isn’t good for them but what they may not know is how it deleteriously impacts their mouth. This feature on alcohol gives them a good grounding in how the dehydrating effect of alcohol leads to less saliva production which is, of course, important for protecting teeth from tooth decay. They also contain a lot of sugar and play a role in enabling tooth erosion thanks to the acidity they gain from being mixed with soft drinks and fruit juice. This informative piece also details how alcohol consumption may lead to vomiting and teeth-damaging acid reflux, tooth staining, dental trauma and even increased risk of oral cancer.
 

Teeth whitening podcast

Everyone wants to look their best and, increasingly for many of your patients, that means getting their teeth as pearly white as possible. It’s a lovely idea but all too often people try to take a shortcut by doing it themselves, which can result in creating more oral health problems than it solves. In the first part of this podcast, from the Watch Your Mouth series, the ADA’s Emeritus Professor Laurie Walsh chats with journalist Helen Hayes about teeth whitening and what causes teeth to become dark or stained, the science of teeth whitening, including the effcacy of blue light devices commonly seen online, and whether fillings and dental crowns can be lightened.
 

Online reading and resources

Check out the News Bulletin’s cover story from December 2020 – Oral health in the festive season – for some great pointers you can pass on to your patients to enable them to “get through the silly season without too much, well, silliness”.