While your dentist may recommend many different ways for keeping your teeth free from dental decay, one thing that almost every dentist focuses on is the use of fluoride toothpaste.
If you’re curious about what this “fluoride” thing is, then here’s some information to make the term more familiar to you. Basically, fluoride comes from the element fluorine and is found in many things around you including water, juices and soda. Furthermore, fluoride is also added to community drinking water. Fluoride plays an important role in preventing dental decay by regulating the flow of saliva and reducing dental plaque. Fluoride toothpaste also promotes the prevention of dental decay through re-mineralization of the teeth where acid produced by bacteria has already started weakening the teeth.
A Word of Caution
While fluoride toothpaste has countless benefits in addition to keeping the tooth enamel sturdy, it is recommended to be careful when making children less than six years of age use fluoride toothpaste. Most children have a habit of swallowing more toothpaste than required while brushing the teeth. And as a consequence, enamel fluorosis can be developed if more fluoride is ingested than is necessary. Enamel fluorosis tends to discolor the tooth enamel. So, supervising children when they’re using fluoride toothpaste for tooth brushing is extremely imoprtant.