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October 31—Halloween. Fourth Thursday in November—Thanksgiving. And, in between these two favorite autumn holidays, we have November 1—National Brush Day!

Okay, okay. Maybe National Brush Day isn’t quite as well-known as Halloween or Thanksgiving, but we take any opportunity to celebrate your dental health. So, let’s celebrate brushing!

After all, brushing is vital for healthy teeth and gums.

• Brushing is your first line of defense against plaque. Plaque forms all day long. Plaque sticks to your teeth. Plaque is filled with bacteria which produce cavity-causing acids. Brushing regularly means plaque won’t stay on your teeth long enough to cause serious tooth decay.
• Brushing is also important for your gum health. Angling your brush to carefully clean plaque and bacteria away from your gum line helps prevent gum disease.
• Tooth decay is the most common chronic disease among children and young adults. The leading cause of tooth loss in adults is gum disease. Good brushing habits help prevent tooth decay and gum disease—a win/win when it comes to your oral health.

To make the most of the time you spend brushing, let’s take a moment to review some basics on National Brush Day.

Are You Brushing Correctly?

• Big, broad brushstrokes aren’t the answer. Instead, use small up-and-down or circular strokes over each tooth and each tooth surface—outside, inside, and on the flat surfaces of your molars.
• Because plaque forms all day, you need to keep on top of it. Brushing at least twice a day for two minutes each time is a good general rule. Dr. Varble, Dr. Dill, and Dr. Wong will let you know the best brushing schedule for your individual needs.
• Brushes are meant to clean, not to scrub. You don’t need a heavy hand for cleaner teeth.
• Which also means, there’s almost never a good time to brush with a hard-bristled brush. Hard bristles, along with hard brushing, can actually damage your enamel and gum tissue. Stick to a soft-bristled brush for dental TLC.

Are You Taking Care of Your Brush?

• To clean away bacteria and viruses you might have picked up during the day, wash your hands before brushing and flossing.
• Shake your brush dry when you’re finished and then let it air dry upright with the handle pointing down. Only use a case for travel, and make sure it has air holes for ventilation. (Bacteria thrive in a wet environment.)
• If your toothbrush lives in the bathroom, close the toilet seat before flushing to avoid airborne particles.
• No matter how close you are to your family members or roommates, don’t share your toothbrush. Sharing doesn’t mean caring in this case—it means sharing germs. Your brush should keep a healthy distance from other brushes as well.
• And no matter how fond you are of your brush, be prepared to replace it often! Most brushes last three to four months at best, because bristles start to fray and can’t clean effectively after several months of use.

It’s no coincidence that National Brush Day comes right after Halloween, the most sugar-filled holiday of them all. So, how can we mark the occasion?

Treat yourself to a new toothbrush! Take a moment to review your brushing habits. If you have young children at home, spend two minutes brushing together to make sure they’re brushing effectively–they might even have some tips for you! Brushing your teeth properly is one of the easiest things you can do to protect your oral health. That’s something to celebrate!

Want to make Halloween a bit less frightening? Just a bit less, mind you! After all, Halloween wouldn’t be Halloween without ghosts, witches, skeletons, and the whole ghoulish crew.

But while the eerily unexpected is half the fun of Halloween in Creve Coeur or St. Charles, unexpected dental problems are no fun at all. That’s why we’ve come up with some fiendishly clever ideas to help you enjoy Halloween treats without tricky consequences.

Beware These Bites

You don’t need a crystal ball to decide which treats are the most sinister for your dental health—hard, sticky, and sour candies are frightful choices for good reasons.

• Hard candies, jawbreakers, lollipops, candied apples, and other candies with hard surfaces take a long time to dissolve in your mouth, exposing your teeth to sugar over a longer period. Even worse, you may be tempted to bite down on them, which can lead to chipped and cracked teeth.
• Sticky and chewy candies like gummies, candy corn, jellybeans, caramels, and fruit chews stick to your enamel and between your teeth, again exposing your teeth to more sugar over a longer period.
• Sour candies, whether they take the form of hard candy, gummies, chews, or straws, are especially bad for your enamel. Candies are sour because of their acidity, and acids erode enamel strength. Weak spots on the tooth surface are the first stage of cavity development.

Avoid Unnerving Orthodontic Events

If you wear braces, eating the wrong treats can come back to haunt you. Chewy foods can pull a bracket right off your tooth. Hard and crunchy foods break wires and brackets. Sticky foods pull on your braces and can be hard to brush away.

Damaged braces mean extra trips to the orthodontist for repair, and can even delay your treatment if the damage is significant and you can’t see your orthodontist right away. Eek!

Instead, talk to Dr. Varble, Dr. Dill, and Dr. Wong about which foods are safe options. Treats like peanut butter cups, mint patties, soft chocolate bars without nuts, and other braces-friendly options will let you enjoy a sweet Halloween night without braces-frightful consequences.

If you wear aligners, always remove your aligners whenever you eat to protect them from warping, cracking, bending, and staining. If you go out, remember to bring your protective case. The night’s no fun if your aligners have *disappeared* at the end of the evening.

And don’t let the time get away from you! Most aligners need to be worn 20-22 hours each day. While you won’t turn into a pumpkin if you party too long without your aligners, you could delay your orthodontic progress if you don’t get your scheduled hours in regularly.

Timely Treating

We can’t wave a wand to vanish cavities, so prevention is key. When you enjoy holiday treats (or any desserts), it’s good idea to eat them in moderation and with a meal. This way, your teeth are exposed to sugars and acids over a limited period. And, as you eat, saliva production increases, which helps neutralize destructive acids and wash away food particles before they can harm your enamel.

Water Works Like Magic!

Water has many bewitching qualities.

• Healthy hydration supports healthy oral tissues and saliva production.
• Water contains no sugars or acids which can damage enamel.
• Drinking water is a great choice if you wear braces, because water helps wash food particles from brackets and wires when you can’t brush.
• Water is the only good beverage choice if you’re wearing aligners. Sugary and acidic beverages which collect in your trays bathe your teeth in those sugars and acids. Some darker drinks can stain your aligners—and your teeth!

Vanishing Food Particles and Plaque

Halloween is meant to be extra. And brushing and flossing are extra important this time of year to make sticky, sugary food particles and plaque disappear ASAP.

Make sure you brush for two minutes at least twice each day and floss once a day to prevent extra Halloween sugars from lurking around your teeth and gums. In fact, it’s a good idea to brush soon after any sugary treat to deprive cavity-causing bacteria of their favorite source of nourishment.

Proactive dental care isn’t magic. Communication and effort are all it takes! Talk to your dental team at Dentistry for Children about the best way to celebrate Halloween without conjuring up problems for your teeth and gums. And when you’re out sharing your holiday spirit, don’t forget to treat your friends to your boo-tiful, healthy smile!

It’s estimated that about one in every five people is affected by tinnitus, which is a ringing or noise in the ears. But tinnitus isn’t a condition in itself; it’s actually the symptom of an underlying condition. Some of these underlying conditions could be hearing loss, injury to the ear, or some sort of circulatory disorder.

Another common cause if tinnitus is a dental injury or dental issue, whether it involves the jaw or the temporomandibular joint, better known as the TMJ. “Somatic tinnitus” is the term given to the version that is attributable to injuries to the head or neck area. Symptoms of somatic tinnitus may include noticeable fluctuations in sound volume, intermittency, headaches, memory loss or increased forgetfulness, and an increased likelihood of being depressed or sad.

Dr. Varble, Dr. Dill, and Dr. Wong will tell you tinnitus usually isn’t serious and is more common in older populations. For that reason, many people won’t even seek an answer to what’s causing it. But people can also experience more severe cases of tinnitus that can affect a person’s ability to complete everyday activities, which has a larger impact on their lives. For people facing these more severe cases of tinnitus, treatment may be necessary to increase their quality of life. It’s also worth noting that tinnitus seems to worsen with age, so while symptoms might not be a problem one year, they may be more significant and distracting the next.

If you have tinnitus that is caused by the misalignment of the TMJ or an injury to the mouth, that’s a condition that can be corrected by Dr. Varble, Dr. Dill, and Dr. Wong and our team at Dentistry for Children. We will work to relieve your symptoms by realigning the jaw or adjusting your bite with routine dental care. Sometimes we won’t even have to go this far, because an oral infection or gum infection may be causing your problem. We might also recommend other life changes, such as dietary adjustments and medication.

If you're experiencing tinnitus-like symptoms and have ruled out various other reasons for it, contact our Creve Coeur or St. Charles office today. Dr. Varble, Dr. Dill, and Dr. Wong and our team will carefully analyze your situation and put you on a treatment course so that you can kick the symptoms for good.

Orthodontic treatment traditionally begins somewhere between the ages of 10 and 14, but there’s no need to stand on tradition where your child’s dental health is concerned! If you have concerns about your child’s orthodontic development, even before the tween years, an orthodontic evaluation will let you know your child’s best options for a healthy, confident smile.

First Visit—By Age 7

The team at Dentistry for Children recommends that you schedule a first orthodontic evaluation for your child by age seven (or earlier if any bite problems or jaw asymmetry are apparent). By this age, most children have a mix of both adult and baby teeth, and orthodontists can determine whether the position and development of the teeth and jaws are on track.

During this visit, your orthodontist will also carefully assess how your child’s teeth and jaws fit together when biting down. Healthy occlusion, or bite, means that the teeth and jaws are aligned and work together comfortably. A malocclusion, or bad bite, means that there is a problem with this alignment.

Your orthodontist might discover:

• No issues for concern.
• A possibility for future orthodontic problems. In this case, follow-up appointments might be scheduled to determine whether and when treatment should occur.
• Orthodontic problems which are already evident, with a recommendation for early intervention.

Early Orthodontic Intervention—Ages 6-9

Some children can benefit from “interceptive orthodontics,” first stage orthodontic treatment begun around the ages of six to nine.

Early intervention can help prevent crowded teeth, protect protruding teeth, and correct jaw alignment problems.

• If a child has a small upper dental arch, palatal expanders can gently enlarge the arch to make room for the adult teeth to arrive without crowding.
• When a baby tooth is lost too soon, space maintainers save room for the adult tooth beneath it to erupt in just the right spot.
• Protruding front teeth have a higher risk of injury from falls or collisions, and treatment will help protect them.
• Treatment for malocclusions like overbites, underbites, and open bites helps create a more comfortable, symmetrical, and healthy bite while young bones are growing, and may prevent the necessity for more complicated treatment in the teen years.

Tween and Teen Years—Ages 10-14

It’s common to treat malocclusions during the tween/teen years. During this stage of development, it’s easier for teeth to move to their ideal positions, because most of the adult teeth have arrived and the jawbones haven’t completed their growth.

Today’s orthodontics offers teens a number of treatment options:

• Braces are smaller and more comfortable, and brackets come in a variety of colors and materials to blend in or stand out.
• Clear aligners are almost invisible, and can treat many types of mild to moderate malocclusions.
• Functional appliances like the Herbst® appliance, the Forsus™ device, the twin-block appliance, and headgear work with braces or aligners to help correct more complex malocclusions.

And there’s more—modern orthodontic options are less noticeable, more effective, and take less time to achieve a beautiful, healthy smile.

Problems with alignment and bite are best treated as early as possible to prevent dental damage, improve self-confidence, and avoid more complicated treatment in the future. If you or Dr. Varble, Dr. Dill, and Dr. Wong are concerned about your child’s orthodontic health, an orthodontic evaluation is the best way to decide how to proceed.

So, when’s the best time to schedule an orthodontic assessment in Creve Coeur or St. Charles? There’s no better time than today!