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Posted on 5/15/2019 by College Hill Dental |
![]() The Benefits of Saliva for a Healthy MouthYou probably know that your mouth needs saliva in order to digest food properly. Saliva helps your teeth break down food into smaller pieces for swallowing. But saliva is also essential for the health of your mouth. Saliva helps to wash food and particles off your teeth that bacteria love to eat. Keeping food residue and other particles off your teeth is essential because bacteria in your mouth create acids that eat away at your tooth enamel. If you are not careful, the acids will eat enough of your enamel away to cause cavities. Another reason you need saliva is for bacteria fighting. If you have enough saliva in your mouth, it helps to keep the numbers of bacteria present in your mouth down. Sometimes people don't produce enough saliva, usually because of medication. Dry mouth not only produced bad breath, but it also means that bacteria can grow more rapidly because the environment is better for them to grow if saliva is not present. If you have dry mouth, there are some ways that you can help produce more saliva. First, up your water intake. Water helps to produce saliva. You can also use over the counter products for dry mouth, which will help with saliva production. Eating a healthy diet can also help with saliva production. If you have questions about dry mouth or saliva, why not give us a call? We can schedule an appointment to discuss your oral health with you. |