See Your Dentist Now Or You’ll See Your Dentist Later

If you were to search the entire world, you’d find very few people who would eagerly line up to visit their dentist. Even a routine cleaning and inspection isn’t exactly a pleasant experience, what with the glaring light, the mandatory flossing, the metal tools they use to scrape the base of your teeth, and of course the ever-present risk that they’ll find a cavity. On the other hand, missing your dentist’s appointment may make things even worse in the long run.

The reason that dentists and dental hygienists scrape your teeth is to remove tartar, a mineralized plaque deposit which enamel-eating bacteria both create and live in. By scraping this away, it removes a haven for bacteria and allows your mouth to stay healthy for longer. However, because tartar is made of the same minerals as your teeth, you can’t get rid of it with a basic brush or mouthwash. You need a metal instrument, and since they can also damage the enamel, you need a trained professional to do the scraping.

You aren’t always the best person to determine whether or not you have a cavity, either. There are certain signs that make them obvious – a dark spot on your tooth, a persistent pain that won’t let up – but by the time these signals appear, your cavity is already fairly bad. A dentist with the right tools can find cavities that haven’t yet grown serious, and by catching a cavity early the drilling and the filling won’t be as involved or as serious as they would be later.

Protecting your teeth takes some serious expertise, and it’s not something that you can fully manage on your own. Cavities are not so rare that you can expect to get through life without suffering from one, and the earlier they get filled, the better. If you wait too long, then not only do you condemn yourself to a long, drawn-out cavity-filling session, you also run the risk of needing a procedure that’s even worse, like a root canal or a full tooth extraction. You may sometimes pretend to yourself that your dentist is sadistic, but if you don’t visit a dental clinic as often as you should, the only person you’ll be punishing is you.