Keeping your teeth and gums healthy requires a solid oral hygiene regimen, which starts with visiting your dentist every six months for a checkup and extends to consistently brushing and flossing at home. However, those aren’t the only ways you can help prevent tooth decay, gum disease, and even serious dental emergencies. To avoid dental damage, you should also follow your dentist’s lead. For example, here are a few things your dentist never puts in their mouth.

Dealing with a dental emergency is never fun, but even if you’re in pain, the least you can do is to not make your situation any worse. Unfortunately, even that can be too much more for some people.

Some people will do anything to avoid the dentist, and oftentimes their DIY treatment only makes matters worse. Here are some dental emergencies that didn’t have to be as bad as they turned out to be. Word of warning: some of these cases are a little graphic.

Dealing with a toothache can be really annoying. Often enough, the pain starts unexpectedly and occurs at inconvenient times. What’s really tiresome, though, is that it can worsen at night. Indeed, a toothache often gets more intense right as you turn in. As for why that occurs, your State College dentist is here with some answers. Read on, then, to learn why tooth pain can get worse at night and what you can do to stop it.

If your home is like many in America, you probably don’t have a dental emergency kit handy. While you may never expect it to happen to you, 1 in 6 Americans has a dental emergency annually. A friendly game of football or eating popcorn at the movies can lead to a broken tooth. No matter the issue, time is of the utmost importance. It’s best to plan for the unexpected to save valuable time until you can get to an emergency dentist. Here’s what to include in your dental emergency first aid kit to make a stressful situation a little easier.

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Your teeth are protected by the hardest substance in your body. Enamel is the outer layer of a tooth that protects the underlying dentin and pulp. Although it’s stronger than some metals, a blow to the mouth or biting a popcorn kernel can break a tooth. If the unexpected should happen, don’t panic! Here are 4 things you should do for a chipped tooth.

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Roughly 90% of adults aged 20 or older have had at least one cavity according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Since you are likely part of the majority, you know how frustrating it can be to have a sensitive or painful tooth. Things like brushing twice and flossing once per day can help prevent cavities, but there are some other ways to keep cavities at bay that may surprise you. Read on to learn about two beverages that can help you prevent cavities.

Third molars, which are also called wisdom teeth, are the last adult teeth to erupt. They usually come in sometime between a person’s late teens and early twenties. Though some people’s wisdom teeth emerge without any issues, impacted wisdom teeth are not uncommon. Fortunately, your dentist can help. Read on to learn about what causes this, signs that you have an impacted wisdom tooth, and how to treat it.

Dental implants have become the premier option for replacing missing teeth. These incredible implants are able to fully replicate the look, feel, and functionality of your lost pearly whites and can last for up to 20+ years with proper care. But sometimes, patients experience increased and abnormal sensitivity around their implants—and if this is happening to you, what should you do? Keep reading to learn more about dental implants and what can cause them to become hypersensitive, along with some ways to alleviate your discomfort.

As it turns out, small teeth can hurt your appearance. Namely, they cause imbalances in your tooth-to-gum ratio that give your smile a “gummy” look. Left untreated, they may even make you look older than you are!

If you want to treat the issue, your local dentist can help. Here are several causes and cosmetic solutions for small teeth — look them over to find a better way to show off your pearly whites!

Since dentures are essentially replacement teeth, you might want to use them at all times. Namely, in addition to eating or speaking with them during the day, you also want to keep them in your mouth overnight. After all, you don’t take out your permanent teeth at night, so why take out your dentures? Surely there’s nothing wrong with keeping them in, right?

As it happens, soaking dentures overnight is a better practice than sleeping with them in your mouth. In fact, overnight denture soaks prevent oral health problems from emerging. For those wanting to know why that’s the case, here’s a summary of denture-use issues solved by an overnight soak.