Oral Hygiene Maintenance refers to a mouth that looks and smells healthy, free of teeth and gum problems. There is so much more to oral hygiene than just getting rid of the bad breath and discolored teeth. In fact, good oral hygiene is reflective of your personality and overall health.
Neglecting brushing and flossing your teeth would eventually cause bacterial build-up, wearing your protective enamel down and making it vulnerable to cavities and bad breath. This doesn’t stop here. If you continue to ignore cleaning your mouth, the bacteria would at some point spread to the gums and make them bleed. If the bleeding prolongs due to bacteria overruling, this could in time enter your bloodstream and reach the heart, leading to heart attacks or stroke.
The same bacteria, capable of causing heart diseases, are also capable of reaching the brain and decreasing its effectiveness, causing dementia and short-term memory loss. For diabetic patients, these bacteria also lessen the therapeutic quality of insulin, leading to uncontrolled sugar levels in the bloodstream, leading to type II diabetics.
Women expecting a child especially need to take care of their oral health to prevent the bacteria from causing infection, because she doesn’t have to be concerned about just her body, but also of the child growing inside her. Failure to take care could lead to problems with the pregnancy and delivery and may affect the health of the child adversely.
A strong bacterial attack could lead to stiffening of the mouth and jaw, causing lockjaw or Trench mouth, and could further spread to the lips and cheeks and may distort the face shape and structure and in time is capable of finding its way to the throat, causing mouth cancer, a disease which kills at least 7,000 people on average each year.
So, as you can see, Oral Hygiene Maintenance is about more than just dealing with discoloration of the teeth and bad breath.
