I’ve got a lot of patients come here pregnant and then I’m excited to talk about their oral hygiene. You can bring your kids to see me when they are in the tummy, I’ve got a lot of patients come here pregnant and then I’m excited to talk about their oral hygiene.

You know how when you talk to the mums, the kids start getting a little bit of sense about their oral hygiene, so that’s something that I always do. I jokes about you can bring your children when you come in for your dental visits every six month, but if you are not a regular visitor of dentists then the ideal time to go to a dentist with your child or take your child to a dentist would be when their first teeth come through just to get that checked, everything is okay and to get some oral hygiene instructions.

Once the child starts turning two, two and a half, they get their baby molars, so baby teeth are very easy to get decay, so it’s important to go to a dentist once they turn two years old.

Are x-rays necessary? Are mobile phones necessary? Is flying necessary? Is walking through the street in the city necessary? Are x-rays necessary? Are mobile phones necessary? Is flying necessary? Is walking through the street in the city necessary?

If those things are something that we can’t avoid, x-rays are definitely necessary. It, again, depends on the balance. Weighing the pros and cons of doing a treatment technique. I wouldn’t say, you don’t need x-rays every six months unless you are extremely high risk of dental cavities and you never brush your teeth.

So, we put patients at different category. High-risk cavity or high-risk case, they need the x-rays every two years to check if there is any new decays coming through. But if you are a regular visitor of dentist, and you brush your teeth twice a day and floss, I would say you can reduce having that x-ray to once every four or five years even.

Dental x-rays carry a very, very, very limited amount of radiation. It’s not even comparable to the background radiation that we get When we use our mobile phones or flying into state. So, one dental x-ray is less radiation than the environmental radiation that we get from flying from here to Sydney.

Smile, it’s the most important part of our personality. Ongoing maintenance is important for our body. As females, we know that better than anyone else. We go to nail salons to get our nails done.

We go get our hairdressers, visit our hairdressers every alternate months and we go and get facials done. We get our hair washed and conditioned every day. And we go to the doctor’s for checking our blood every year and it’s important to get your teeth checked every six months because smile is the most important part of our personality and the way people perceive us.

So, when you look at a person, the first two things that you look at a person’s face will be the eyes and the smile. So, there is the answer for you.

You have to change your toothbrush once every two months. I don’t think females would ask that question. You know, they want to change their toothbrush every week. It depends on who is asking me. If men ask me, I would say, “Once every year.” No, just a joke. It has to be changed about once every two months or three months would be ideal. It doesn’t matter, male or female.

You have to change your toothbrush, once every two months. If you’re changing you’re toothbrush once every week and it’s not going past a week, that means you’re brushing too hard. So, two months is a good time and you can prolong up to three months if you want.

A very good telltale sign of a toothbrush need to be changed is when it frays and when the toothbrush bristles looked chewed, messy and it’s flare out like that. You don’t want to go onto that stage. Probably then your partner or whatever already bought you a free toothbrush.

Your gums bleed when you floss because your gums are not healthy. I’ll tell you a typical clinical scenario which happens in my rooms all the time. A patient comes in and say … They know what my first question will be when they come to see me every six months, they’ve got that naughty smile on their face. I say, okay, Mr. Brown, have you been flossing? And he would go, Asha, when I saw you last time, you showed me how to floss. I tried flossing and my gums started bleeding and I stopped it. This is a common question that everyone asks me. My gums bleed when I floss. It’s like a vicious cycle. Your gums bleed when you floss because your gums are not healthy. That is the reason why your gums bleed, not because you’re hurting your gums by flossing.

It’s like your gums are inflamed, they’re swollen, so then when you try to put the floss through, the first reaction will be bleeding. But what I want to emphasise is when your gums start bleeding, when you floss, you continue flossing for about two weeks, every single day, and your gums will stop bleeding. Bleeding is a sign of disease and inflammation. Once your gums stops bleeding, that means your gums have come back to a very healthy, firm pink stage, which is the sign of healthy gums. So your gums should not bleed when you floss, when you floss every day.

Rinsing your mouth whenever you have a chance, especially after eating sweet, is a very good way of avoiding decay. We all live our life to enjoy life, okay? I like sweets too, and I always tell my patients I go to the gym so I can eat what I like. So I brush my teeth so I can eat what I like, which is sugar or sweet. As long as it’s balanced.

Life is all about balance. So I’d never tell my patients don’t touch sweets. I tell them you can as long as you include it a part of a meal, so that after a meal you like eating a chocolate, feel free to eat. And then make sure you exercise, brush your teeth, and drink some water. See, we have some cultures, including Indian culture, where I’ve seen my grandma doing rinsing her mouth with water after eating food. That’s the part of the ritual my parents, and they taught me to do as well, which we don’t follow.

We just eat food and then drink some water, and that’s about it. Rinsing your mouth whenever you have a chance, especially after eating sweet is a very good way of avoiding decay if you’re a sweet tooth. There you go.

It’s important to visit a dentist and ask the dentist how to clean the sensitive gums. If your gums start bleeding when you’re brushing, that means you have got gum disease, but you should still keep continuing brushing.

Use a soft toothbrush and use your toothbrush angle 45 degrees to the gums, and gently brush that junction between the gum and the teeth.

Definitely visit a dentist and it’s important to visit a dentist and ask the dentist how to clean the sensitive gums because you already know you have gum disease.

Most of the bone, without being lost and then the teeth start shaking because there’s no bone support. I thought I’d use this diagram to explain what gum disease is. This is the soft area of the gum which is attached to the tooth, but we call it free gingival because this is the connection between the soft gums and the hard tooth. But there’s only like a two to three millimetres, usually, in healthy teeth. But when the bacteria gets into this little pocket, the bacteria eats away the bone around the tooth and then slowly make the pocket deeper and deeper and deeper. Sometimes when you go into the dentist they talk about some numbers, you must’ve heard that. You know, we call it perio charting. But measuring the depth of the pocket, so a healthy pocket depth would be two to three millimetres, but if you hear like, numbers four, five, six, seven. I hope none of you have heard that, nine, because nine is like all the way in here, and almost to the bone without being lost and then the teeth start shaking because there’s no bone support, that’s an advanced form of gum disease. We call it periodontitis. So, now you must have gotten a rough idea of, you know, why should you visit a dentist every six months, to avoid decay, to avoid gum disease, to avoid toothache, to avoid teeth falling out.

Your Gums Starts Bleeding

Bleeding gums is always a sign of gum disease. You know how gum disease is because of gum disease, there are few signs that I want to explain how gum disease is. Gum gets inflamed so when you brush, your gums start bleeding. Just gentle tooth brushing, gum starts bleeding, that’s in a very early sign of gum disease. Having said that, there are some conditions like teenagers have got more chance of bleeding gums or pregnancy you get more chance of bleeding gums, but bleeding gums is always a sign of gum disease.

Bad taste in the mouth.

The second sign would be a bad taste in the mouth all the time or when you get up in the morning you can feel that taste in your mouth. The third sign would be your loved ones will start saying to you, “I can smell the bad breath!” That is a very sensitive issue, and before that, you get that you could probably go to a dentist and get your gum disease sorted out.