We at Sethi dentistry believes in providing value to our patients in the form of information and education. Awareness leads to prevention.This is also true regarding our dental health.
When you are young and visit your dentist regularly and brush daily, you don’t get a lot of dental problems. But as you grow old and start to ignore your dental and oral health, your teeth begin to develop a number of problems. One of the problems that causes a lot of distress but is not much talked about is the problem of food getting stuck between our teeth.
Is it a design flaw?
All of the surfaces of our teeth are not in continous contact with one another. There is a v-shaped gap between all of them where a portion of gums resides. When you eat food, because of the motion of tongue and soft tissues and also because of this v-shaped gap, some portion of food gets stuck here. If we don’t clean this food (ask your dentist or you can contact us at our clinic how you can clean between your teeth), it will lead to lot of problems.
Is it bad when food gets stuck between your teeth?
If you are health-conscious and control your diet to eat a lot of raw vegetables and salad, the food that gets stuck between your teeth is fibrous. Such kind of food doesn’t encourage acid production by the cavity-making bacteria. It is also a sort of natural cleanser, not only of gut but of teeth too.
Now imagine, if you eat a lot soft, packaged food, it, gets stuck between your teeth. Since it is mostly carbohydrate, it can be used by the bacteria to make acid and eventually causes cavity. Hence, the kind of food you eat is crucial to this problem.
Conditions leading to food-lodgement between teeth and their solutions
- Hidden Cavities
It is one of the most common culprits for food lodgement. It is, in a way, a vicious cycle. The food, when it begins to get trapped between the teeth, leads to dental cavities, which in turn cause more food lodgement.
Therefore, it is always suggested to visit your dentist every six months for a regular check-up. You by yourself can’t discover and diagnose the cavity between teeth. Only your dentist can do it, sometimes with sharp instruments and sometimes with X-ray. And if you delay this visit, the cavity will keep on growing and instead of a simple filling, you will have to go through a multiple-step RCT.
- Old Age
When you grow old, your teeth grow old too. There is a continuous wearing down of the teeth surfaces. This leads to a change in natural contours of teeth and disturbs the normal flow of food inside the mouth during chewing. Hence, the food starts to get stuck and creates problems.
You can talk to your dentist for various methods like full-mouth rehabilitation to get this problem treated.
- Oral Habits
Sometimes, because of stress or long-standing issues, people develop certain harmful habits like nail-biting or opening a hairpin with teeth. These habits lead to microstrains in teeth which accumulate for years and then lead to teeth fracture. If this fracture occurs at a junction of two teeth, food starts to accumulate here.
The masochistic habit of opening cola bottles with teeth leads young men to conform to a toxic masculine stereotype. It leads to instant cuspal fracture or even a vertical fracture in a tooth, hence destroying the natural design of a tooth, leading to the beginning of the cycle of food entrapment and cavity formation.
To resolve these issues, it is always good to talk to your dentist as it can be difficult to give up ahabits of years.
- Genetics
Because of the disparity in genetics, sometimes we inherit genes of jaw size from one parent and tooth size from another. This leads to a person having small teeth in large jaw or large teeth in small jaw. In first condition, there is a space present between the teeth and in second, the v-shaped gap is disturbed. In both these situations. The usual anatomy of teeth is absent and food gets pushed into the gaps between teeth because of the pressure of hard and soft tissues of mouth.
You should talk to your doctor as an Ortho treatment (braces/aligners) may be a solution to your problems.
- Presence of Milk Teeth
Sometimes the natural layout of teeth is disturbed if some extra elements are present in the dentition. For eg, some people have long-standing milk tooth in their mouth. If the permanent tooth that was supposed to replace this milk tooth is missing from the jaw bone, the milk tooth won’t fall off. This may lead to food lodgement as the v-shaped gaps are not properly formed between a permanent and a milk tooth.
Consult your dentist and talk to them about the way forward. In almost all the cases, you will have to go for the removal of the milk tooth followed by the fabrication of a bridge or an implant-supported single cap.
- Presence of Extra Teeth
Supernumerary teeth, meaning extra teeth, lead to a lot of problems. If in front portion of mouth, it looks bad and leads to poor oral hygiene.
It should be extracted as soon as possible.
Effect of Food Lodgement on Gums
The gum in under-surface of the v-shaped gaps between teeth is very soft. If food keeps on getting trapped between your teeth, and is also sticky, it will lead to the accumulation of harmful bacteria upon the teeth as well as gums. This will lead to a lot of problems like bleeding and pocket formation.
A combined treatment aimed at gums and teeth needs to be carried out to catch the problem at its root. A thorough scaling and filling of cavities must be done by the dentist.
At the same time, it is necessary that the patient must be carrying out the instructions of oral hygiene given to them by the dentist. In absence of daily oral and dental hygiene maintenance, it is very difficult to regain an overall dental health.
Hope you find this blog useful, you can share it with your near & dear ones.In case of any issues regarding your dental problems.