You aren’t even 40 yet but you’ve already lost a few teeth. This situation can be very frustrating because missing teeth can affect your dental health in a variety of ways. And while you think that dentures could be beneficial, you may want to consider dental implants instead because they provide many of the same benefits but have others advantages to consider.

Improves Your Dental (and Overall) Health

When you lose a tooth at any age, the surrounding teeth may suffer from damage. For example, the shape of the jaw could sag, which may put excessive strain on the rest of the teeth in your mouth. Even worse, a missing tooth may make bacteria invasion easier, which could affect the health of your gums and trigger other unpredictable health issues.

Summertime is full of fun and adventures for children, but a lot of dangers lurk in the summer months that can affect your child’s oral health. If you want to better protect your child’s teeth and gums this summer, check out these four tips you should follow.

1. Stick With Healthy Drinks

Summer can get hot, which makes drinks like soda and juice all the more appealing, but sugary drinks are terrible for your kid’s teeth because sugar attracts bacteria, which leads to tooth decay. Some drinks such as soda and orange juice are also high in acid. This acid is strong enough to soften your child’s tooth enamel, and without strong enamel, bacteria easily penetrate.

In times past, it used to be that when your wisdom teeth begin to erupt, they had to be removed. Wisdom teeth are the last permanent teeth to erupt, usually in your late teens or early 20’s, and can impact already established teeth. Most dentists prefer to do the procedure as soon as possible because it is easier to remove them while the jaw bones are still growing.

However, removing your wisdom teeth is not always necessary and you could still keep them well into your old age. If you are just getting your wisdom teeth, or have had them a long time and are having problems, then you may wonder if extraction is right for you. Here are some common reasons why extraction is recommended and some alternatives if you feel that it is not right for you at this time.

Relatively new types of dental braces, such as lingual, clear aligners, and ceramic braces seem to overshadow traditional braces. However, if you know how to take care of traditional metal braces, they can give you clear advantages over the contemporary types of braces. Below are some of the benefits of traditional metal braces and how you can care for them.

Why Metal Braces Are Great

Metal braces offer many advantages, from subtle to obvious.

Strong and Durable

Each of your teeth are coated in a fine layer of dental enamel, giving teeth their characteristic shiny, white appearance. Composed of hydroxyapatite, dental enamel is the hardest biological material that exists, ranking higher than steel on the Mohs hardness scale.

Unfortunately, that doesn’t mean that dental enamel is impervious to damage, and when it erodes away, it can allow darker, yellow dentin to shine through, making your smile look older. Here are three easy ways to prevent enamel erosion.