Beautiful smiles are contagious and leave an everlasting image on everyone’s mind. Also, it is rightfully said that a smile is one of the first things that people notice about you. There are a lucky few who naturally own a dazzling smile with pearly white teeth, though a healthy smile needs to be thoroughly worked on.

To maintain a healthy and beautiful smile often requires adopting lifelong habits, changes of lifestyle, and even some corrective procedures. Here are five ways to refine the appearance of your teeth and achieve a dreamy and healthy smile.

1. Focus on Oral Hygiene

Brushing your teeth is the ABC of oral hygiene, but it takes much more than a toothbrush and toothpaste to have the perfect healthy smile. 

• Starting with the basics, you must brush your teeth twice a day with fluoride toothpaste. To protect the enamel of your teeth it is widely recommended to opt for a soft-bristled toothbrush. Be gentle while brushing, as overly aggressive brushing can damage your teeth as well as your gums. 
• Flossing is as important as brushing your teeth, as a floss reaches the plaque stuck in between where a toothbrush can’t have access. As recommended by the American Dental Association to guard your teeth against cavities, brushing twice a day for two minutes with a soft-bristled brush and flossing is significant.
• Rinsing with a mouthwash that contains fluoride prevents tooth decay, but you should not do it right after brushing your teeth. Moreover, don’t eat or drink for 30 minutes after using a fluoride mouthwash.

2.  Eat And Drink Right 

Probably you have been told a million times that you are what you eat, which is very relevant to maintaining a healthy smile as well.  

• It is supremely hard to resist your favorite treats like cakes, chocolates, nuts, but even a slight excess of such sugary eatables can cause huge damage to your teeth. Try to switch to teeth-friendly foods and also avoid teeth-staining food and drinks.
• A beautiful smile will be of no use if your mouth smells bad, which is a huge turn-off for everyone. Bad Mouth smell is also related to what you’re putting in your stomach, thus choosing a healthy diet plan can cure many things at once.
• Similar to your food choices, do not indulge in sipping sugary drinks, sodas, or excessive use of coffee drinks to protect the enamel of your teeth. You must always drink plenty of water to remain hydrated as it prevents tooth decay and cavity formation.

3. Consider Getting Veneers

A beautiful smile is synonymous with having perfectly shaped and aligned teeth. Having chipped, crooked, overlapping, or damaged teeth can badly affect the appearance of your smile. Thankfully, modern dentistry provides many corrective procedures to alleviate such issues and veneers are becoming rapidly popular in this category.

• Dental veneers are thin shells prepared from porcelain (which is similar to the enamel of our tooth) and are attached to your teeth.
• Dental veneers are capable of fixing several cosmetic concerns, that too with a single treatment. You can get discoloration corrected, you can get rid of your damaged and misshapen teeth with veneers.
• The most commonly used veneers are porcelain and composite veneers. A porcelain veneer is the top choice because of its closeness in appearance to natural teeth and most importantly its longevity. Composite veneers serve the same purpose and are cheaper than porcelain veneers, however are not durable enough.

4. Get Rid of Missing Teeth By Getting Implants

Missing teeth seriously compromise your smile and also affect your confidence to smile freely. Apart from affecting the beauty of your smile, missing teeth can also be a huge problem for your health.

• With the gaps as a result of missing teeth, the surrounding teeth begin shifting inside, thus causing difficulty in biting and chewing. 
• To get rid of this issue, you can opt for dental implants. Dental implants are one of the best options to fix your missing tooth problem. Unlike dentures, which have been used for a very long time and require a lot of maintenance, dental implants are very much similar to normal teeth in functionality.
• Your dental implants will not only replace the gaps but also are proven to eradicate speech issues caused as a result of missing teeth, elevate comfort, oral health, and most importantly your self-esteem.

5. Don’t Miss Routine Visits to the Dentist

Prevention is better than cure! That applies to your dream to have a healthy as well as a beautiful smile. Probably the best way to get yourself a consistently dazzling smile is to never miss your routine dental checkups.

• No matter how conscious and careful you are with your dental health, it is always recommended to go to your dentist. Not only twice a year dental checkups but also have cleaning sessions after every six months for a healthy smile.
• The cleaning sessions help in thorough cleaning of hard-to-reach areas in your mouth and can detect any signs of oral problems.
• Regular checkups will ensure that any serious problem can be addressed before it causes any severe damage to your teeth and eventually your healthy smile.

The Bottomline

A healthy and beautiful smile is not at all difficult to achieve. All you need to do is give extra attention to your oral hygiene and adopt good habits which can improve your oral health and your smile. 

Remember that other than the cosmetic procedures, your self-care routine will take its due course to show the expected results. Be patient on your journey to have a healthy and beautiful smile and adopt these habits as a lifestyle for long-lasting results.  

References:

1. Oral Health Topics [online] Available at: <https://www.ada.org/en/member-center/oral-health-topics/toothbrushes]
2. Loren’s World. n.d. Why This Diet Will Change Your Life – Loren’s World. [online] Available at: <https://www.lorensworld.com/business/life-work/why-this-diet-will-change-your-life/> [Accessed 16 September 2021].
3. Arthur Glosman, DDS. n.d. Porcelain Veneers Beverly Hills – Best Veneers in Los Angeles. [online] Available at: <https://arthurglosmandds.com/porcelain-veneers-beverly-hills> [Accessed 16 September 2021].
4. Frisbee, E., 2021. Dental Implant Surgery — Advantages, Risks, and Insurance Questions. [online] WebMD. Available at: <https://www.webmd.com/oral-health/guide/dental-implants> [Accessed 17 September 2021].

Author Bio

Ashley Stefan runs the blog at VIGOR.icu where she writes about various health-related topics and shares tips on healthy living. Hobbies: swimming, gardening, and binge-watching popular TV shows.

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