Seven Foods and Drinks with Astonishing Oral Health Benefits
Eating healthy foods is essential for your general and dental health. While brushing, flossing, and using mouthwashes are crucial to prevent tooth decay and gum disease, maintaining food habits for dental health also helps. A healthy diet helps keep healthy teeth and gums, avoiding familiar problems, including cavities and gum disease.
If you aren’t aware of the top foods and drinks for your teeth and gums, we have compiled a list of 7 to help you improve your dental health and keep infections at bay.
Which Foods Have Astonishing Oral Health Benefits?
1. Fruits and Vegetables
Some optimal foods for oral care are vegetables, including carrots, broccoli, pumpkin, and sweet potato. These vegetables contain vitamin A, essential for protecting the enamel, the hard outer surface of your teeth.
Many crunchy fruits and vegetables like celery, carrots, and apples, besides salad greens like lettuce, spinach, and kale, have high water and fiber content making them healthy for your teeth and gums by promoting saliva production, which dilutes the food’s sugar content.
Vitamin C helps strengthen blood vessels and connective tissue to slow the progress of gum disease by reducing inflammation. Vitamin C-rich foods include oranges, lemons, limes, and grapefruits. Unfortunately, they are also acidic and can cause enamel erosion. Therefore they are better had in moderation to prevent damage to the enamel to make it vulnerable to tooth decay.
2. Dairy Foods
Milk and foods prepared from milk are foods that remain the center of food groups. Dairy foods are an essential ingredient of a healthy diet for people of all ages. Foods like milk, and cheeses, including cottage cheese and yogurt, provide essential nutrients and carbohydrates, proteins, vitamin A and B12, besides minerals like calcium, phosphorus, zinc, potassium, and magnesium.
The dentist in Fort Lee, NJ, considers dairy foods optimal for your dental health. It is well established that the foods help prevent tooth decay and protect against enamel erosion with the consumption of acidic foods. In addition, dairy foods contain casein protein that combines calcium and phosphorus to create a protective barrier for the enamel. Therefore cheese eaten after a meal counteracts the effects of acids on the teeth if you have had citrus fruits or bread and other simple carbohydrates. Unfortunately, flavored milk drinks remain a concern because of higher sugar levels. However, there are better than carbonated drinks and fruit juices with high sugar.
3. Fatty Fish
Omega-3-rich fatty fish containing higher levels of vitamin D are essential to absorb calcium in the stomach. We refer to fish, including salmon, mackerel, anchovies, herring, black cod, sardines, bluefin tuna, bass, and white fish. Therefore if you intend to get the benefits of calcium in your diet, you must consume foods rich in vitamin D.
4. Water
Water is vital for maintaining life. However, it also has several benefits for your dental health. First, your saliva is 99.5 percent water, and if you do not drink sufficient water, you might become dehydrated. The dehydration can thicken your saliva and increase the chances of tooth decay. Water is essential to digest foods because it helps break down food and neutralizes acids from bacteria, besides lubricating the food for swallowing. A cleansing effect also accompanies water to help reduce plaque buildup and rinse food debris and beverages like coffee, tea, and dark fruit juices, which are responsible for staining your teeth.
5. Nuts
Many nutrients essential for your health are part of nuts. The nutrients include vitamin E, magnesium, and phosphorus, which are crucial for excellent bone and gum health. Nuts are also rich in fiber, helpful in stimulating salivary flow. In addition, many nuts, such as pistachios, walnuts, Brazil nuts, and almonds, also have anti-inflammatory properties. Unfortunately, if you wear braces or have faulty restorations, you find it beneficial to refrain from eating nuts until you complete your treatment.
6. Green Tea
Green tea contains several healthy chemicals that kill or suppress mouth bacteria responsible for dental plaque. The tea also reduces saliva acidity and dental plaque creating an oral environment that helps prevent cavities. Green tea is also rich in catechin, an antioxidant that helps reduce inflammation in the body, including gum inflammation which is popular in American society.
7. Cocoa
Finding a better product than cocoa to help make your teeth less likely to become prone to tooth decay is challenging. However, if you have dark chocolate containing 70 percent cocoa and have it in moderation, you have an excellent superfood. Polyphenols are also present in chocolate, similar to green tea providing additional benefits and antioxidants beneficial for gum health.
Dentists recommend avoiding milk chocolates rich in sugar and choosing dark chocolates containing higher cocoa for your dental health.
So Good Dental suggests the foods mentioned above provide astonishing benefits for oral health. If you’d like more information about the diet beneficial for your dental health, scheduling a consultation with this practice helps collect essential and valuable information.