Taking care of your oral health can feel like a routine task. And, as with any routine task, it is easy to let parts of your oral hygiene routine start to slip over time. Allowing your oral hygiene routine to slip can have serious consequences. Fortunately, following a few simple tips can help you stay on track and improve your overall oral hygiene.

Make brushing a priority

It can be tempting to skip out on brushing your teeth from time to time. Sometimes after a long day you simply want to fall into your bed and go to sleep. While skipping your nightly routine every once in a while will not cause your teeth to fall out immediately, you may be surprised at how quickly getting lax with your brushing routine will impact your overall oral hygiene. Tooth decay is a progressive problem. Once it starts, decay will continue to worsen until you take steps to stop its progress. When you make brushing a priority it significantly reduces the possibility that decay will set in and start causing problems.

Floss even when you don’t want to

If you look hard enough you will find the occasional person who loves to floss. But the vast majority of people view it as a necessary evil. If you fall into the latter camp, it is important that you make yourself floss even when you don’t want to. Flossing is an essential part of keeping your teeth and gums healthy. It gets to areas of your mouth that brushing simply cannot reach. Flossing is one of the most effective ways to protect against gum disease. Flossing, even when you don’t want to, will have a big impact on your overall oral health.

Keep a standing appointment with your dentist

Getting to the dentist for routine dental care is a way to keep your mouth healthy and catch problems while they are small. However, many people find it easy to forget about setting up those routine dental appointments. If you decide to always have a standing appointment with your dentist it takes away the need to to set an appointment up every six months. A simple way to do this is to always schedule your next preventative appointment at the end of your most recent appointment. Before you leave the dentist’s office after a cleaning, get the next appointment scheduled and put it in your calendar. This way you always have a dental appointment on your calendar and will not let the time for your appointment slip your mind. 

The three tips outlined above are easy to understand, simple to follow, and can provide you will long-term benefits. If you need help getting your oral health back on track after a period of being lax with your oral care, schedule an appointment with Coral West Dental to get started.