Dr Jason Tung from BMP Dental strongly believes prevention is better than a cure. Don’t let yourself or your family get into a sticky situation.
Even though the ‘prevention is better than a cure’ phrase isn’t always used in reference to dentistry, our team still strongly believes this is a discussion often dismissed but worth having.
Dr Jason Tung from Beenleigh Marketplace Dental recently joined a podcast where he spoke about oral health. Read on to see what he said . . .
What’s the most important thing about oral health?
The simple most important thing about oral health that people should know is: what stage and status their oral health is at.
Because health is a very dynamic situation, it can change from time to time based on your daily routine, your health and your diet. And I think being able to understand what implication that might have with your oral health, and with what you’re doing, then you can have a strategy to combat that and protect yourself from any harm.
How often are you actually supposed to go see your dentist?
Generally, we advise our patients to visit the dentist at the six-month mark.
That is to initially establish an understanding of where you’re at, how healthy you are, and how at-risk you are.
Because the patient can come in having ‘low risk’ meaning they’re doing everything right; they have a healthy lifestyle, healthy diet, and the teeth are in a very protective status. Then we can advise them to come to see the dentist once a year.
We compare to some other patients, however, where they are at in the ‘high-risk’ group based on their lifestyle factors; they may be on medication or have other health concerns. Their oral health can potentially deteriorate at a very rapid rate. Those patients we typically advise to have a shorter monitored time until their condition stabilised.
So, everyone can be different but when you start to establish where you are at, six months of a good interval to start with.
What’s a common mistake that people make that negatively affects their oral health?
The biggest problem I see is when a patient tries to take matters into their own hands e.g. Dr Google, asks their friends and family, or even avoiding seeking medical advice from the dentist.
The problem with this is it prevents us from identifying any significant problems. Which makes dental visits more protracted and more involved than patients would like.
Nowadays with marketing, self-diagnosis is one big problem we tend to find that prevents people from visiting the dentist.
If you would like more information about the services the team at BMP Dental offers for maintaining excellent oral health or have an oral health concern you would like to get checked, do not hesitate to contact us today. Or, click to learn about Dr Jason Tung and his team.