Saliva, better known as “spit,” is one of the unsung heroes of the body. OK, maybe that was a little dramatic, but hopefully, after reading this post, you’ll have a higher appreciation for saliva: whether it’s your own or your baby’s drool or even your teenager’s (temporary?) fixation on spitting. Saliva has some fun and interesting features you may not know about.
Building Healthy Dental Habits for Your Teen
When it comes to parenting teens, parents know that it’s a pick-your-battle proposition. And, yes, we’ll be the first to say that your teen’s oral health is vital to overall health and wellness, but we also know that you have other top priority issues to address as well. That’s why in this post, we want to give you a couple of tips for helping manage your teen’s oral habits in a way that we hope will make forming lifelong dental patterns more natural for your teen and less of a battle for you. At the end of the day, this isn’t the most important parenting issue you’re facing, though, so cut yourself and your kid some slack (easier said than done, we know).
Children and Smiles – They Go Together
If you Google “smiles and smiling” or “facts about smiling” or some version of that, you’ll find all kinds of articles and posts about why smiling is so amazing and why you should do it more and even some exercises to help you “practice” smiling. You can look all that up on your own, if you want. Some of it is weird and bogus, but a lot of it is true. Smiling IS good for you.
How to Help Your Child with Dental Anxiety
In our last post, we brought up the subject of kids with dental anxiety and promised that we’d continue the conversation and give ideas about how to ease some of that fear. If your child experiences dental fear, there is a way forward. So today, we’re going to talk about some of the most common stress factors as well as strategies for helping manage or overcome those fears.
What is Dental Anxiety?
Let’s just start by saying that dental phobia is real. In some cases, it has really obvious causes (such as a traumatic childhood dentist experience); in other cases, the cause is harder to pinpoint. But it’s a real thing. Going to the dentist can trigger the same kind of terror for some people, that others might feel about spiders or heights or flying or needles or…you get the picture.
Are Dental Checkups Actually Necessary?
Dental checkups are important!
You probably expect to hear that from your dental healthcare providers, but we’d love to invite you to move past the eye-roll and take a look at some of the value and benefits of consistent checkups for both kids and adults.
Mom-Approved: Three Years in a Row!
For the third year in a row, when Atlanta Parent asked their readers about their favorite oral health professionals, moms chose Dr. Hernandez and Dr. Johnson of Vital Smiles! We love this! Honestly, mom’s opinions matter more to us than anyone else’s, because no one knows a kid’s world like their mama does. We’re thrilled to have this honor, and we are proud of our doctors and staff who work hard every single day to deliver top-notch care.
Things You Didn’t Know Your Dentist was Doing at Your Checkup
Welcome to February! February is National Children’s Dental Health month, and we are celebrating! We’re celebrating our dentists and our staff members, and most of all, we are celebrating our favorite patients (and their adults). If you’re one of our favorite patients’ adults and you’re reading this and thinking, “Yeah, it’s another one of those made-up ‘holidays’—like Squirrel Appreciation Day,” we’re willing to agree that there’s nothing inherently magical about February. We do, however, think that the important things in life are worth taking time to notice and appreciate, so we want to highlight the value of your child’s oral health and appreciate the care that goes into maintaining a happy, healthy mouth.
How Snacking Affects Your Teeth
Remember when you were a kid and snacks made the world go ‘round? Moms, y’all can definitely vouch for how quickly a fun outing becomes a disaster when you forgot the snacks at home, right? I mean, snacking is a way of life for children; they basically eat all day long. Unfortunately, many of us have maintained our childhood snacking habits, and it’s taking a toll on our teeth. How does that work? Let’s talk about it.
Taking Care of Your Tongue
When you think of oral health, it’s really easy to focus on teeth almost exclusively and forget that there are other important players in your overall mouth health. One of the other key influencers of oral health is your tongue. In this post, we’re going to talk about how taking care of your tongue can help eliminate or prevent bad breath.
- 1
- 2
- 3
- 4
- Next Page»