You Eat Healthy But You're Having A Tooth Pulled: What Gives?
Posted on: 16 November 2016
After suffering from a lifetime of teeth problems, you finally started eating healthier. However, your dentist has told you that they have to remove a tooth that has nearly rotted away. How is this possible? And how can you avoid losing more teeth in the future?
Many Otherwise Healthy Foods Have Secret Sugars
One of the great secrets that few people realize is that many otherwise healthy foods have hidden sugar that could be impacting the health of their teeth. Often, these hidden sugars go by a variety of names, including cane crystal, corn sweetener, crystalline fructose, dextrose, fruit juice concentrates, glucose, malt syrup, and even seemingly healthy options like organic evaporated cane juice. As a result, a variety of items you would never expect to have sugar may have heavy doses, such as:
- Granola cereals, which may have up to 23 grams of sugar per serving
- Sushi, which usually has some sugar added to the rice
- Tomato sauce, which has the natural sugary nature of tomatoes to blame
- Frozen yogurt, which is nearly as high in sugar as ice cream
- Multiple types of breads, including refined grains (which is often a code word for "sugar")
All of these secret sugars will impact your teeth and cause unfortunate decay. This decay can sneak up on you over time and make it impossible to avoid tooth extraction.
Preparing For Your Tooth Extraction
While the above-mentioned information is definitely useful for your future dental health, that doesn't change the fact that you're going to be losing a tooth. This can feel like an embarrassing or frustrating situation, but at least it doesn't have to be a painful one. There are a variety of preparation techniques performed before your extraction to ensure your pain is minimized:
- X-rays are performed to identify the exact tooth that must be extracted and locate anything that may cause problem, such as under-grown teeth roots
- Taking antibiotics before the surgery and after to ensure that you don't have an infection or an impacted tooth after the extraction
- Preparation of an anesthetic which will be applied to your mouth to keep you from feeling excessive pain
- Anesthetization of the general area and deep sedation to keep you from being awake during the process
- Prescribed pain medications that will keep you from feeling too bad after the surgery
- Application of ice packs to the painful area
Beyond these simple treatments is changing your diet to get rid of the hidden sugars that impact your teeth. This might be hard in some cases, especially if you're a huge fan of a certain type of bread. However, there are several types of bread and cereals that have no sugar and will help you avoid another tooth extraction. You should also make sure to regularly brush your teeth, including the area where the tooth was extracted, to avoid dental health problems. Failure to do so could result in more extracted teeth in your future.
For more information, talk with a dental professional at a local clinic, like Renovo Endodontic Studio.
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