In my experience, all dentists will suggest what they feel to be the very best plan for any given patient. The differences between the treatment suggested by one dentist and that of another reflects that dentists preferences based on his or her experience. Thus differing treatment plans do not necessarily reflect any deficiency in either dentist’s judgment.

It is important to remember that there are numerous ways to treat the same situation, and it is always important for the dentist to tailor the treatment plan for each patient’s specific circumstances. A major part of those circumstances may be financial, and since different treatment plans can vary a great deal in cost, it is helpful if the dentist takes the patient’s ability to pay into account.

Think of treatment plans like various models of cars offered by different dealers. All of the models are new, have warranties and will work well out of the lot. The higher end models, however have some advantages not found in the less expensive models. Some options add years to the life of the car. Some add to the appearance and enjoyment of driving it. Dental treatment plans are like that too. Saving a badly damaged tooth with a root canal and a crown will preserve it for a long time, but it is expensive, and the patient may opt for a much less expensive extraction instead. Replacing a missing tooth may be done with an expensive implant or fixed bridge (which remains in the mouth and is not removable), or a much less expensive removable partial denture. A dentist should be able to explain the advantages and disadvantages of the various options, and allow the patient to make the decision.

All dentists who have graduated from an accredited dental school should be technically competent to perform any procedure that they personally feel comfortable performing. But it is important to remember that each one is an individual, and no two dentists can perform exactly the same technical procedure in exactly the same way. As a matter of fact, no single dentist can perform exactly the same procedure exactly the same way twice in a row! How well your filling turns out depends as much on how wide you can open your mouth as it does on the technical qualifications and skills of the dentist himself.

Over the years I have developed a respect for those who practice dentistry. By and large, these are honest people who have the best interest of their patients at heart. For an interesting perspective on the overall state of ethics in the dental profession, please see my page on bleaching teeth, and especially the section on why it took so long for many of us to accept bleaching as a standard part of dental treatment.

This topic provides information on basic dental care. If you are looking for information on tooth decay or cavities, see the topic Tooth Decay. If you are looking for information on gum disease (periodontal disease), see the topic Gum Disease.

What is basic dental care?

Basic dental care involves brushing and flossing your teeth regularly, seeing your dentist and/or dental hygienist for regular checkups and cleanings, and eating a mouth-healthy diet, which means foods high in whole grains, vegetables and fruits, and dairy products.

Why is basic dental care important?

Practicing basic dental care:

* Prevents tooth decay.
* Prevents gum (periodontal) disease Click here to see an illustration., which can damage gum tissue and the bones Click here to see an illustration. that support teeth Click here to see an illustration., and in the long term can lead to the loss of teeth.
* Shortens time with the dentist and dental hygienist, and makes the trip more pleasant.
* Saves money. By preventing tooth decay and gum disease, you can reduce the need for fillings and other costly procedures.
* Helps prevent bad breath. Brushing and flossing rid your mouth of the bacteria that cause bad breath.
* Helps keep teeth white by preventing staining from food, drinks, and tobacco.
* Improves overall health.
* Makes it possible for your teeth to last a lifetime.

Are there ways to avoid dental problems?

Keeping your teeth and gums healthy requires good nutrition and regular brushing and flossing.

* Brush your teeth twice a day—in the morning and before bed—and floss once a day. This removes plaque, which can lead to damaged teeth, gums, and surrounding bone.
* Use a toothpaste that contains fluoride, which helps prevent tooth decay and cavities. Ask your dentist if you need a mouthwash that contains fluoride or one with ingredients that fight plaque. Look for toothpastes that have been approved by the American Dental Association.
* Avoid foods that contain a lot of sugar. Sugar helps plaque grow.
* Avoid using tobacco products, which can cause gum disease and oral cancer. Exposure to tobacco smoke (secondhand smoke) also may cause gum disease as well as other health problems.1
* Practice tongue cleaning. You can use a tongue cleaner or a soft-bristle toothbrush, stroking in a back-to-front direction. Tongue cleaning is particularly important for people who smoke or whose tongues are coated or deeply grooved.
* Schedule regular trips to the dentist based on how often you need exams and cleaning.

When should my child start seeing a dentist?

By the time your child is 6 months of age, your doctor should assess the likelihood of your child having future dental problems. If he or she thinks your child will have dental problems, be sure your child sees a dentist before his or her first birthday or 6 months after the first primary teeth appear Click here to see an illustration., whichever comes first. After your first visit, schedule regular visits every 6 months or as your dentist recommends.

Experts recommend that your child’s dental care start at 12 months of age. If your baby has dental problems caused by injury, disease, or a developmental problem, see your pediatric dentist right away.

That way, you will have more confidence and fresh breath.

The tips on getting rid of bad breath are:

1. Eating yogurt is one way to cure bad breath. You should eat low carb or sugar-free yogurt twice a day for at least six weeks. Yogurt has bacteria in it that will help you kill the bacteria in your mouth that cause your breath to stink.

2. Another tip on getting rid of bad breath is to drink plenty of water. Drinking water will allow you to keep your mouth wet and moist. This allows you to keep your mouth from getting dry. When its dry, your breath will stink. So, drink at least 8 glasses of water per day.

3. Brushing your teeth after each meal is another tip on getting rid of bad breath fast. You should brush your teeth after every meal. Also, make sure you brush your tongue. It has bacteria on it that cause your breath to smell bad.

Flossing will also help you get rid of your bad breath. You have plaque, bacteria, and food that’s between your teeth. By flossing, you will be able to get them from between your teeth. So, be sure you floss daily to help keep your breath from stinking.

These are the 3 tips on getting rid of bad breath. If your breath stinks, you need to something about it now. Your breath could get worse if you don’t. Or, you could be at risk of getting an infection.

Similarly, it is not unusual for people to be unhappy with the length or shape of their teeth. So (as you might expect) there is a complimentary procedure known as tooth recontouring. This procedure involves the dentist removing very small strips of tooth enamel to change the length or shape of the offending tooth.

The aim of tooth recontouring is to enhance the appearance of individual teeth and to therefore improve the overall look and balance of your smile. It is often used as part of a broader programme of treatment, which can include tooth whitening for example.

Tooth recontouring is a very straightforward treatment and dentists will often recommend it to resolve minor issues such as a chipped tooth, a tooth with an irregular shape or slightly overlapping teeth. It can also be used to reduce the length of the teeth – especially the canine incisors at the sides of your mouth.

Your dentist uses sanding techniques or a diamond burr to gently smooth out the imperfections and create neater, more aesthetic shapes to your teeth. It may sound a little bit scary, but it is actually also a painless treatment – in fact, an anaesthetic is not usually required as your dentist does not touch the sensitive parts of the teeth, such as the pulp. In the majority of cases, recontouring can be done in a single visit to the dentist. So the results are immediately apparent.

Recontouring, therefore, has many benefits. One of the most important benefits, which has not been mentioned yet, is that it can also help you to maintain a better standard of oral hygiene. Because recontouring can be used to smooth out bumps, trim teeth that overlap and alter irregular shaped teeth, it means that it also removes many of the pockets where food and plaque build up. Once these pockets are gone, your teeth become much easier to keep clean.

If you are interested in tooth recontouring, your first step should be to arrange a full consultation with your dentist. Not everybody is suitable for recontouring. It is important to remember that recontouring is really only suitable for minor imperfections and small corrections. If you require significant work to your teeth, you may require a different type of treatment.

A full consultation with your dentist should help to manage your expectations so that you understand what can be achieved through recontouring. Some patients expect to see radical results after recontouring, when in reality it is only designed to add a little harmony and balance to their teeth.

If you have badly chipped or crooked teeth, your dentist may choose to recommend a different type of treatment rather than recontouring. For example, porcelain veneers are thin layers of porcelain that can be bonded to your teeth. They last for around a decade and present the appearance of white, uniform teeth when you smile. Porcelain veneers can therefore cover up a host of chips, cracks, discolouration and crooked teeth, which recontouring would only make a minimal difference to.

Alternatively, your dentist may be able to apply a bond to a particular tooth when it requires more work than simply recontouring. A bond is a tooth-coloured resin which fills in the cracks and hollows in the tooth to improve its appearance. Together, bonding and recontouring can be used to improve your teeth and enhance the quality of your smile.

Finally, your dentist may also recommend against a recontouring procedure if the enamel on your teeth is very thin. Your dentist will need to take x-rays to ensure that there is enough enamel on your teeth to strip it away and shape it, without exposing the pulp underneath. If the enamel is thin and the pulp is very close to the surface, recontouring may not be an option as the teeth could be irreparably damaged.

Think of it as a road system. A problem at the busiest junction in town – let’s say it is a broken traffic light – can cause the traffic to gridlock. So even though the broken traffic light may be streets away, it can still cause the traffic to stop moving all over town.

So when the ‘traffic stops’, what sorts of problems can it cause. There is plenty of debate over what exactly TMJ can lead to. However, dental experts and doctors agree that TMJ disorders encapsulate a wide range of problems, including pain in the face, jaw, teeth, head, neck and shoulders. Some doctors also believe that TMJ Disorder is responsible for back pains. Even issues such as snoring, migraines, ear infections and breathing problems are sometimes attributed to stresses and strains on the jaw joint.

TMJ disorder can affect anyone. There is no age range and young children can be particularly susceptible to problems caused by the TMJ. In fact, it is probably fair to say that most of us have some issue – however mild – which relates to our TMJ. After all, TMJ problems related to how our teeth ‘bite’ together and very few of us have a perfect ‘bite’.

TMJ disorder is usually caused by having a malocclusion, or a ‘bad bite’. This can mean an underbite or an overbite, but in either case, the result is that the teeth do not site together properly when you bite down. A malocclusion can be either mild or severe and, when the teeth do not sit together properly, it causes unusual stresses and strains on the jaw joint when you talk, chew and swallow. Considering that these are the kinds of actions we are doing pretty much day in, day out, you can imagine how those stresses and strains build up into some serious aches and pains.

Occasionally, a malocclusion can also be caused by trauma to the teeth or jaw. But whether the misalignment of your teeth is natural or caused by an accident, it can cause a domino effect that leads to other aches and pains throughout the body.

Can TMJ disorders be treated or fixed? Depending on the cause of your malocclusion, there are a number of steps that your dentist or doctor can recommend to relieve the pain and stress on your jaw.

Firstly, you could simply try painkillers. This will not address the issue of a bad bite, but if it is not a severe TMJ disorder then painkillers may help. If you are grinding your teeth at night, your doctor may recommend that you tackle your night-time bruxism with a mouthguard. This approach means that you relieve the pain, yet also take steps to protect your teeth for the future.

Alternatively, your dentist may be able to ease the stresses and strains on your bite by making slight adjustments to your teeth. It could be that your malocclusion is caused by missing or broken teeth. By replacing these and recontouring other teeth, your dentist can improve your bite and hopefully reduce the pain it causes. Alternatively, seeing an orthodontist and moving the teeth by using a brace may help.

If the malocclusion is severe, it may be that surgery is the only option. A severe malocclusion could mean that the whole jawbone is misaligned rather than simply the teeth. In these cases, your dentist will refer you to an oral and maxillofacial surgeon. By making incisions in your jaw, the surgeon can move pieces of it so that the jaw can be repositioned in the perfect way.

Many people try to delay their visits to the dentist for as long as possible. But this is a mistake and a quick look at what causes toothache shows us why.

Our teeth are protected by a hard outer surface, called enamel, and a tough inner wall, called dentin. At the same time, however, these tough defences are constantly under attack. They come under attack from plaque, which builds up on our teeth and reacts with sugary foods to create acid. This acid then erodes the enamel on our teeth, leading to decay.

Decay is the major source of toothache. If plaque is not regularly removed from the teeth, the acid it produces causes cavities to form in the teeth which grow bigger and bigger. Eventually, those cavities reach the inner pulp of the tooth which then becomes exposed and infected.

Therefore, it is important that you visit your dentist regularly for two reasons. Firstly, your dentist can ensure that plaque is not building up on your teeth. Secondly, your dentist can spot cavities early and fill them before they become a serious problem.

As with most other dental issues, if you ignore something it will not go away. A small cavity grows into a bigger cavity. From here, the pulp which contains the nerves and blood vessels that keep the tooth alive becomes infected. If this infection is not treated, it can form an abscess which causes the gum and cheek to swell up.

What can you try to do to prevent toothache? Your first step must be to try and stop plaque from building up on your teeth. The best way to remove plaque is by regular brushing. Your should brush your teeth twice every day. Most dentists will also recommend that you floss regularly too. Flossing helps to get rid of the food and other debris that builds up in between your teeth where your brush does not necessarily reach.

Secondly, you should try to avoid sugary snack and drinks. These are the kinds of foods that react with the plaque on your teeth to cause acid. It is this acid that erodes the enamel and causes tooth decay. Therefore, by avoiding sugary snacks and drinks, you can help to avoid the formation of tooth cavities.

While cavities can take a long time to develop, you will not necessarily experience any pain from a small cavity. Only your dentist may notice these. Therefore, the decay can be eating away at your tooth for a long time before the toothache arrives suddenly and without much warning. You should make an appointment to visit your dentist as soon as possible. In the meantime, over-the-counter painkillers may help to ease the discomfort.

Most cases of decay and toothache can be caught early enough and remedied with a simple cavity filling. Your dentist will identify the hole in the tooth which is causing the pain, clear away the decay and fill the hole with a tough, durable material.

On occasions, if the plaque has eaten away a significant proportion of the tooth, it may have become cracked, split or fractured. If this happens and the structure of the tooth is affected, a filling may not be possible. However, your dentist may still be able to save the tooth by fitting a crown.

As the decay progresses, the pain becomes even more intense and the treatment required becomes more complex and costly. Once the pulp becomes infected and an abscess forms, root canal treatment is required. When the dentist clears out the infected pulp, the tooth’s links to the blood and nervous systems have been lost. The tooth, therefore, is essentially dead.

Often, pain is a warning sign from our body that we need to have something fixed. This is very much the case with toothache. However, as you can see, it is important that you do not wait until have toothache before visiting your dentist. The best approach to looking after your teeth is to be proactive; visit your dentist regularly and keep your teeth in tip-top condition. If you look after your teeth in the right way, decay should not be a problem.

The problem is that most of us do not have a perfect smile. In fact, perfect smiles are usually only found in Hollywood films. The majority of us, when we look in the mirror, will spot something that we would like to change. It could be the colour of our teeth. It could be crooked teeth. It could be the shape of our teeth or our gums. It could be chips or cracks. But whatever the issue, most of us dream of being able to change it.

Now, however, dentistry is changing. The days when you would only visit the dentist for a check-up or a filling are long gone. High street dentists offer a wide variety of new treatments and modern techniques. So high quality cosmetic dentistry is now more affordable and more accessible than ever before.

If you are interested in a smile makeover, your dentist now has a lot of options at their disposal. Some people are only interested in a single specific treatment and may even choose their dentist because of they use a certain type of branded product. Other people see their dentist as a consultant, with the expertise to recommend a programme of treatments that will combine to create the perfect smile.

There are four key areas where your dentist can recommend improvements to your smile. These areas consist of: the colour of your teeth; repairs to your teeth; straightening of teeth; and shaping your gums. Most smile makeovers will consist of one or more of these treatments.

So let’s begin with tooth whitening. There are lots of tooth whitening products currently available and what you choose will depend very much on your time and budget. Laser whitening techniques can take just one single appointment and show an improvement immediately. Other techniques may require wearing a gumshield each evening for a number of weeks, as well as a number of visits to your dentist. So ask yourself: what sort of results do you want and how soon do you expect them?

Another approach to whitening discoloured teeth is to have porcelain veneers fitted. These can be more expensive than other whitening techniques. However, they can be suitable if you have other issues with your teeth, such as gaps, chips or slightly crooked teeth. Veneers will cover all of these and create the impression of whiter, straighter teeth.

Talking about veneers leads onto the second type of improvement: general repairs to your teeth. Veneers are one option for correcting chips and cracks. However, dentists also have the capability to replace missing teeth with dental implants and correct individual chips and abrasions with tooth-coloured bonding materials.

Veneers will help to cover up slightly crooked teeth so that they present a more uniform look. However, for more extreme cases, dentists have an array of orthodontic products to choose from. Nowadays, traditional ‘train track’ braces are being superseded by products which are far more lifestyle-friendly. You can get ‘invisible’ braces that attach to the back of your teeth, removable braces and tooth-coloured braces. You can also get braces which are fast-acting, so you wear them for a much shorter period of time than conventional braces.

The end result is that you can now wear braces without feeling self-conscious in front of other people. Finally, many people who want their smile adjusted choose to do so because they show too much gum when they smile, or think that their teeth are too long. A technique called ‘gum contouring’ means that dentists can now easily shape your gums in just one visit. Dentists can also shape individual teeth if required, to improve your smile.

Therefore, your smile makeover is now much more of a possibility than ever before. If you are interested in any of these treatments, arrange a consultation with your dentist. In some cases, if you are interested in a certain product or brand, you may need to find a specialist dentist. Possibly, your current dentist may be able to offer you an alternative option.

It doesn’t have to be. There are a number of sedation techniques that dentists can employ to help patients to relax. In particular, sedation is a useful approach when treating people with dental phobias. Many people in the UK suffer from a phobia of visiting the dentist. It often means that they have anxiety attacks and nausea, or that simply their nervousness and tension means that their dentist finds it very difficult to treat them successfully.

In many cases, people with a dental phobia will simply avoid going to the dentist. So any potential dental issues that they have will simply get worse and worse, unless they can find a treatment solution.

This treatment solution could be sedation. When a dentist sedates a patient, they do not send them to sleep. The sedatives used relax the patient so that they do not feel any pain and also do not feel nervous or anxious.

Therefore, sedation is also quite different to anaesthetic. Under sedation, you are still conscious. Under general anaesthetic, you are put into a deep sleep. This distinction is important as there are some dental phobic patients who have a phobia about anaesthetic. There are also others who have a phobia of needles and injections. Therefore, it is important that these patients understand that sedation is different.

There are three types of sedative. With each type of sedative, the patient remains conscious and can still follow their dentist’s instructions. The first type of sedative is inhaled – it’s more commonly known as laughing gas – and even though you are conscious, you may remember few details of your treatment. The second type of sedative is oral (including drugs such as temazapan) and have longer lasting side effects. You will need someone to accompany you to and from the dentist. The third type of sedative is intra-venous. Once again, you will remain conscious but you will have no memory of the treatment at all.

This combination of options means that most patients can be treated for virtually any type of dental issue while under sedation. Of course, it does still depend on what exactly are the factors behind a patient’s dental phobia. Many phobias are very complex and require a great deal of understanding before they can be faced.

This is one reason why the use of sedatives should be considered carefully. For many people who are anxious about undergoing dental treatments, sedatives are a valuable help. However, it is also important that you try to get to the bottom of what gives you such anxiety attacks. Even if they are offered sedatives, many dental phobic patients eventually realise that learning to trust their dentist is at the heart of the dentist/patient relationship. This level of trust cannot always be built up if a patient is under sedation.

This is no to suggest the sedatives should not be used. But they should be considered part of an overall treatment for your phobia which includes building an open and positive relationship with your dentist.

Of course, there are plus points in the use of sedatives for dentists as well as for patients. If you do have a patient that is particularly nervous, it has the potential to disrupt your entire surgery. Their anxiety can affect other patients in the waiting area. It can make them harder to treat and so extend waiting times. It can also mean that they do not receive the standard of care that they need, as their phobia makes them very difficult to treat properly.

Using sedatives can help to solve these problems. When a patient is sedated, they will still respond to a dentist’s instructions. Therefore, the dentist can treat the patient effectively and ensure that their teeth are checked and looked after properly. It means that you can keep your practice running smoothly and ensure that every individual patient gets the quality of care, attention and customer service they expect.

Luckily, your teeth are made of strong stuff. They are covered by a tough outer enamel which is designed to protect the teeth against decay. Underneath the enamel, there is also a layer of dentin which is similarly strong and resistant to decay.

Beneath the dentin, however, are the softer parts of the tooth, such as the pulp, nerves and blood vessels. It is not until the decay reaches these parts of our tooth that we start to feel any real pain. In fact, we can have cavities in our tooth enamel which we might never know about until a dentist spots them.

How can you tell if you have tooth decay? As mentioned above, small cavities may go unnoticed. With larger cavities, however, the decay may have broken through the enamel and dentin. If the decay reaches the pulp of the tooth, the bacteria can cause an infection which causes the pulp of the tooth to become inflamed and irritated. One of the problems with the pulp becoming inflamed is that the infection cannot naturally drain away. As the pulp swells, it is trapped by the hard dentin and there is no way to naturally relieve this pressure.

This pressure causes toothache. Typically, you may begin to notice the ache when eating hot or cold foods. It may even begin as just mild sensitivity. As the infection grows, however, you can find that the tooth and even the jaw starts to swell. You gums and cheek can become tender to the touch. In severe cases, you may even notice some bleeding from the tooth and gum area around it.

This condition is called Pulpitis. If the condition is not given the appropriate treatment, then Pulpitis will eventually cause the pulp to die.

Up to a certain point, Pulpitis is reversible. The decay can be removed, the area around the tooth cleaned and the cavity filled. If this is done early enough (before the infection has become to serious) the pulp is revitalised and the tooth saved.

In cases where the infection has become irreversible, root canal treatment may be required. Your dentist will need to drill into the pulp and remove the infected matter. Once the pulp is removed, the chamber is then filled with an inert material such as ‘gutta percha’, which is a latex derivative. Once this procedure has been completed, the tooth is essentially dead. Often, a crown is fitted to the dead tooth to afford it extra protection.

In other cases, where the structure of the tooth is no longer sound – for example, if it has split or fractured – then your dentist may be left with no option but to remove the tooth.

Can you protect against Pulpitis? As with many dental conditions, the best type of care is preventative care. If you can reduce the amount of plaque on your teeth, you can reduce the amount of decay. If you can reduce the amount of decay, then you are far less likely to experience severe dental problems.

Removing plaque from your teeth is relatively straightforward. Regular brushing will normally remove plaque. However, plaque builds up on our teeth every single day, so you must ensure that you brush at least twice every day. Regular flossing will also help.

Being careful about what you eat and drink is also important. It is the bacteria in the plaque on your teeth that creates the acid that causes tooth decay. Research shows that this bacteria reacts most effectively with sugary foods and carbohydrates. Smoking will also increase the amount of bacteria present on your teeth.

Saliva is our bodies’ natural way of eliminating bacteria and neutralising acid. However, if you consistently snack on sugary foods, you are not giving the saliva the time it needs to work effectively. So as well as cutting down on sugary foods and drinks, you should also try to only eat them at mealtimes.

No-one is 100% sure what causes mouth ulcers. What we are all agreed on is that they can be very painful. The inside of the mouth is one of the most sensitive and tender areas of the body. Mouth ulcers constantly seem to catch on our teeth, become inflamed when we eat and irritated when we drink. They often appear in clusters too, which makes things even worse.

For some people – perhaps as many as one in five of us – mouth ulcers are not just a one-off that causes us discomfort every now and again. They are a constant worry and a chronic, recurring problem. For chronic sufferers, mouth ulcers return on a regular basis, stay for longer and can often be much larger than usual. The worse cases can involve people having more than ten ulcers in their mouth at a time.

Sounds nasty, doesn’t it? Well, it most certainly is. For chronic sufferers of mouth ulcers, life can become difficult during an attack. It can become very difficult to eat, drink and talk. It makes every day a torment and a trial, whether you are trying to talk to business contact on the phone or eat a pizza in a restaurant. It can make people depressed, anti-social and irritable.

There is no medical consensus on what causes mouth ulcers. However, most doctors agree that they are not contagious. The most likely is that they are an allergic reaction or that it is our auto-immune system over-reacting. On other occasions, they can simply be caused by damage to the inside of the mouth. As it is so tender, even brushing too hard may be enough to harm the cheek or gums.

As there is no real understanding of what causes mouth ulcers, as you can expect, there is no defined approach about how to treat them. Ultimately, however, you just have to tough it out. If ulcers are very painful, most people will try gargling with soluble aspirin or rinsing your mouth with iced water. You should also try to avoid eating anything which might unnecessarily inflame your ulcers – hot, spicy foods and hot drinks will probably fall into this category for most of us.

There are also a number of over-the-counter treatments for mouth ulcers. While there are different brand names, the majority take the same approach which is a gel containing analgesic. You may have to try a few until you find a brand that works for you.

If treating them is not a great success, how about preventing them. Is there anything that you can do to prevent mouth ulcers? Most doctors will recommend eating a healthy diet that gives your body an abundance of vitamins and minerals. This will usually include lots of fresh fruit and vegetables. Taking vitamin supplements may also help while some sufferers recommend natural live yoghurts and pro-biotic products.

You must also make sure that you maintain a good oral hygiene and health programme. For a start, you must make sure that you are not using any products that irritate your mouth. Use a softer toothbrush and try and find a toothpaste that is less abrasive. Similarly, you may find that an alcohol-free mouthwash is the best choice (or no mouthwash at all). Make sure that you visit your dentist regularly, so that you dentist can help to remove plaque and debris from your teeth. This will stop the build-up of bacteria that can damage your gums.

Finally, if you do suffer from mouth ulcers on a regular basis, it is important that you consult your doctor rather than suffering in silence. There are a number of conditions of which mouth ulcers can be a symptom. These include immuno-deficiency diseases and mouth cancers, so you should always seek a professional opinion and advice from your doctor or your dentist.