Oral Health Tips for Summer: Part 1 – 2024 Edition
Summer is here, if it wasn’t obvious by recent North Shore temps! Heat aside, the days are warmer and longer, and summer vacation typically brings happy vibes all around. While summer brings a whole lot of happy opportunities, we’d be remiss if we didn’t mention that it also tends to disrupt normal routines, including oral health and hygiene routines. Dentists often see an uptick in tooth decay and cavities during the summer season. In order to make sure your teeth stay healthy and shiny this summer, check out these dental care tips for the summer season.
Choose Water
Hotter days cause more sweating, meaning extra hydration is required to replace lost fluids. It can be tempting to choose sugary drinks like ice cold lemonade, sweet tea, and sodas to quench your thirst, but sugary drinks tend to dehydrate you faster while adding to worsened oral health. When you consume sugar, the bacteria in your mouth feed on that sugar and produce acid that erodes your teeth, consequently causing cavities. Even drinks that are marketed as healthy often have just as much sugar content as soda, such as juices and smoothies.
If you have a hard time choosing water, lean toward opting for low sugar drinks such as milk, unsweetened teas, and unsweetened sparkling waters. If you do choose to consume sweetened beverages, you can protect your teeth by drinking faster rather than slowly sipping your beverage. Slowly sipping sugary drinks keeps the sugar in your mouth for longer, providing a feast for hungry bacteria.
Limit Certain Foods
Along with avoiding sugary drinks, there are certain foods that can cause extra harm to your oral health. Here is a list of some of the worst foods for dental hygiene that you should consume in moderation, or avoid altogether:
- Sweets: Candy, cake, ice cream, pie, and all the sugary desserts. If you have a sweet tooth, try to opt for fresh fruit over baked goods and candy.
- Acidic foods: Pickles, citrus foods, coffee, wine, and anything with vinegar. These foods can be incorporated as part of a healthy diet, but too many acidic foods can cause the enamel on your teeth to wear. Like all good things, moderation is key.
- Dried fruits: These get their own category because dried fruits are often marketed as health foods and not seen as sweets. Dried fruit may as well be in the same food group as candy, but with a little extra fiber. Fruit already has high sugar content, but most dried fruits contain a large amount of added sugars in addition to the fruit’s natural sugar content.
Protect Your Teeth While Playing Summer Sports
People tend to engage in more activity and outdoor exercising during warm weather months. You might be joining a summer sports league like beach volleyball, soccer, or softball, or maybe this is the time of year that you bust out the bicycles or rock climbing gear. Regardless of which sport you are going to engage in, it is important to protect your teeth during all of your summer activities.
The best way to protect your mouth while playing sports is to wear helmets and mouthguards. Helmets should always be properly fitted to be the most effective. If you are playing a high impact sport like football, helmets are especially crucial in reducing your chances of getting injured. Mouthguards are the most effective piece of safety equipment when it comes to protecting your teeth. They can help prevent chipped and broken teeth, as well as tooth loss entirely.
Stay tuned for part two in our summer oral health series!
