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"A confi loaf is no problem"
7.2.2017
Translation: machine translated
Dentist Adrian Lussi explains how often toddlers' teeth need to be brushed and why night-time sips of milk do much more damage than desserts after dinner.
Mr Lussi, when should you start brushing your child's teeth?
As soon as the first tooth comes in. This is usually around six months of age.
What should you look out for when buying a toothbrush and toothpaste?
It should be a small toothbrush with soft bristles and children's toothpaste with fluoride. The difference to products for adults is that toothpastes for children contain less fluoride; babies and toddlers cannot yet spit out toothpaste and swallow it. Fluoride is not harmful, even in slightly higher doses, but it can lead to white spots on the teeth.
How often do you need to brush babies' and toddlers' teeth?
Until the children are four or five years old, brushing their teeth once a day is sufficient - although twice would of course be better. However, anyone who has more than one child at home knows that brushing everyone's teeth several times a day can be quite exhausting. If the children are a little older, they can of course brush their own teeth - but an adult should always brush them afterwards.
You've already mentioned it: Brushing teeth with small children is sometimes a stressful affair. Do you have any tips for long-suffering parents?
We have noticed that children's toothbrushes are often too hard, so you should definitely use soft bristles. These clean just as well as hard ones. But of course, even then, children don't always want to brush their teeth. It can help if you make a playful ritual out of it: when my own children were small, we often told them something or sang to them while they sat on our laps. That worked quite well.
Can you give children sweets at all if you want to keep their teeth healthy?
Confit bread in the morning and dessert after dinner are no problem if you brush your teeth afterwards. However, it is better to eat an apple or a carrot for snack. Both children and adults should not consume sugary foods and drinks, including bananas and ketchup, more than four or five times a day. However, sweets are particularly damaging at night: potties with sweetened tea or fruit juice, which the baby sucks on repeatedly, are the most common cause of tooth decay in young children today.
You should refrain from giving your baby a milk bottle at night. Why?
People hardly produce any saliva during sleep. However, saliva has an important function in preventing tooth decay: it dilutes and neutralises acids in the mouth and surrounds the teeth with a protective film.
The negligence of some parents when it comes to children's dental hygiene is probably also due to the fact that milk teeth eventually fall out. And rightly so?
Milk teeth are placeholders. Where they are missing, others take their place, resulting in misalignments in the permanent teeth, which then have to be painstakingly corrected. In addition, decay in milk teeth reaches the root of the tooth much more quickly and leads to great pain, which everyone wants to spare their child.
When should you take a small child to the dentist for the first time?
I don't think much of fixed rules here. What's much more important is that a visit to the dentist should be a positive experience for the child. It's best if the child simply goes along with mum or dad once, and when saying goodbye, the dentist quickly looks into the child's mouth en passant - without making a big fuss. The situation is different if there are signs of tooth decay: if a child has elongated white spots on the gum line, an appointment should be made immediately.
Adrian Lussi is Professor and Director of the Department of Conservative, Preventive and Paediatric Dentistry at the University of Bern.
The brochure Healthy Milk Teeth from the Swiss Association of Paediatric Dentistry SVK.
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Note: These products are not recommendations by the author, but suitable products from our range.
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A passionate journalist and mother of two sons who moved from Zurich to Lisbon with her husband in 2014. Does her writing in cafés and appreciates that life has been treating her well in general. <br><a href="http://uemityoker.wordpress.com/" target="_blank">uemityoker.wordpress.com</a>
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