Much like the rest of our body, our teeth don’t take cold weather that lightly. Read the full article here about 8 Dental Tips for Cold Weather.

The thing is, while humans have managed to endure extreme climates for centuries and build fully-functional lives and societies in some of the most inhospitable places on Earth, the folks who are not well-adjusted to rough weather tend to ‘underperform’ when the first frost comes around the corner. 

Eskimos, for example, as well as those Siberians living in Yakutia only start worrying about the cold if it’s below – 50° Celsius. The people in New York or somewhere in Brazil, on the other hand, close down schools and stop traffic if the snowfall is high enough to cover the street curb. 

As far as our teeth are concerned, the most important thing to keep in mind is that, if everything’s alright with them, cold won’t impact your day to day life when teeth are concerned in any major way. 

That said, if the enamel on your teeth is thin or damaged so that your teeth are more exposed to ‘outside’ influences, you probably dread the day the first chilly winds start blowing in your town. 

In this article, we’re going to talk about how cold weather affects your teeth and what you can do to protect them, if the temperatures outside are freezing. As you will see, proper hygiene and a bit of common sense are often more than enough to neutralize the negative effects cold weather tends to have on your teeth. 

Here are the deal 8 Dental Tips for Cold Weather

1) Keep Well Hydrated

Prevention is half the cure, as the saying goes, so one of the best ways to prevent teeth-related problems during the winter and whatever other months may prove to be unexpectedly cold (thanks to global warming, oddly enough), is to make sure you don’t get a cold. 

While these two things may seem unrelated, the reason why getting a cold can have a bad impact on your teeth is that you would likely produce more phlegm and spit more often, which then leads to accumulation of bacteria in your oral cavity. 

Also, your body temperature rises, which provides a fertile ground for microbes in your mouth to spread faster. 

Now, one of the preventive measures you can take to ward off the flu and colds is to stay well-hydrated throughout the day. As a result of proper hydration, you are less likely to develop a cold-related sickness and thus also jeopardize the health of your teeth. 

2) Clean the Toothbrushes You Use Regularly 

… lest you end up doing more damage than good by using them. 

The thing is, toothbrushes are designed to penetrate deep between your teeth and clean thoroughly every nook and cranny in your oral cavity. 

This is a great thing, of course, but if you don’t clean the toothbrush you’ve just used as well as your teeth, you can bring back the bacteria and other pollutants you’ve just cleared out of your mouth right back in it. (This is especially true if you’re down with the flu or a cold, too.) 

3) Disinfect Your Mouthguard (If you’re using one) 

Similarly to how dirty toothbrushes can bring back nasty bacteria into your mouth due to improper maintenance, so to speak, an unwashed mouthguard that stays overnight can create all sorts of troubles if you just pop it back in, in the morning. 

To prevent this annoying and potentially health-hazardous turn of events, make sure you wash the mouthguard thoroughly every time you plan to take it out of your mouth for an extended period. 

4) Switch to a Desensitizing Toothpaste 

Nowadays, there is a myriad of different kinds of toothpaste available on the market. 

The sort you should be interested in during the winter would be the types that desensitize your teeth, so that you don’t feel that sharp pain you may get when you drink something cold. 

If you aren’t sure what toothpaste to buy, you can always contact your dentist for instructions. In case you live in Australia, perhaps you can get in touch with a dentist from Terrigal, to learn more about this. 

5) Wear a Scarf 

The thing about our teeth is that they’re not only affected by their immediate surroundings. (That is, the oral cavity.) 

If you expose your lower jaw and neck to cold weather, this may lead to inflammation in your oral cavity, which will then inevitably affect your teeth negatively, too. 

Here’s the thing – if you’ve ever had your wisdom tooth, or teeth, removed, you already know that the initial pain after the local anesthetic subsides extends beyond oral cavity and spreads to your throat.

In a similar way, if you leave your neck and lower jaw exposed to cold weather, the resulting discomfort will inevitably travel to your teeth, too, which can create all sorts of dental problems if you’re not careful.

6) Be Careful with Hot Drinks

While having a steaming hot tea or that creamy coffee with cinnamon during the winter has been a go-to anti-cold weather and anti-dreary winter atmosphere solution for many centuries, for those with sensitive teeth, the sweet relief of sipping a hot and delicious beverage when it’s cold outside can create more harm than good. 

Of course, that’s not to say that having a hot coffee will downright ruin your teeth, but it can certainly cause discomfort, especially if you have the beverage right after you’ve entered a building from outside where it’s cold. 

To prevent having a sharp tooth ache ruining your drink, make sure that it’s lukewarm when you have it, so that the contrast between the outside temperature and the temperature of the beverage isn’t too steep. 

7) Eat More Greens 

One of the ways to strengthen your teeth and ‘brace’ them for cold weather would be to eat more greens such as spinach and kale. 

The reason why these two vegetables are so useful for your teeth and more broadly – your entire oral cavity, is that they’re rich in antioxidants and vitamin K, both of which are beneficial for making your oral cavity more resilient to rough outside conditions. 

Of course, it’s not just the two aforementioned vegetables that would work well for this purpose, as all greens that happen to contain vitamin K and antioxidants will have the same effect. (Broccoli and cabbage, for example, are also well-known to be rich in vitamin K, for example.)

8) Consider Using a Coenzyme Q10 Supplement

If you’ve experienced problems with your gums before and expect to see more of them when the cold weather sets in, you may want to try using something called Coenzyme Q10 supplement.

While vitamin K and antioxidants are fairly commonly-found in many vegetables, Coenzyme Q10 is found in our diet only rarely, so the best way to increase the amount of it you ingest would be through supplementation. 

If you’re unsure how to get a hold of some Q10, your dentist will surely know all about it, as well as what supplements to take and where to find them. If you need a recommendation, you can care for your smile with the Cosmetic dentist in Roseville and learn more about supplements.

All in all, taking good care of your teeth during the winter isn’t that difficult if you make sure to keep up the good hygiene and you switch to a more suitable toothpaste. Through in frequent hydration and increased brushing frequency in case you get sick, and you can rest assured your teeth won’t bother you during the cold winter months.