Why Do Some People Have Dental Problems During the Summer Season?
[M.D.S. (Ortho), Fellow ICOI]
Summer season is synonymous with warm weather, vacations, endless fun time for kids along with illnesses like heat stroke. Everyone aware of the impacts hot weather can have on our bodies. Do you know that the heatwave will hurt your teeth and gums? Apart from chickenpox, measles, sunburn, and other summer diseases, various annoying dental problems also arise during the summertime.
With little precautionary actions, you can overcome dental irregularities like summer-related seasonal toothache, teeth sensitivity, and so on.
In this article, our dental doctors and oral hygienists have described how the sunny season causes teeth problems.
1) Dehydration
Dehydration often occurs in summers because of the increased body temperature due to heat. Hydrating yourself with fluid consumption is the best way to balance the depletion of water in your body and its side effects like dizziness, dry skin, fever, etc.
Such chronic dehydration reflects in your oral health also with many devastating effects. The reduced moistness in the body affects the salivary glands which in turn, lessens the salivary flow. Low salivation levels will make your teeth, gums dried out to make the oral tissues a breeding ground for bacteria to thrive and tend to various dental diseases.
2) Acids present in soft drinks
Many people prefer soft drinks like soda, fruit juices, sparkling water for hydration. Despite reducing the body heat and helps in moisturizing ourselves, these fluids contain excessive sugary and acidic components that are detrimental to teeth. This is because the acids and sugars in foods we take feed bacteria to corrode the teeth.
In simply, if you take carbonated drinks for hydration, it means you are providing a way for microbes to breed in your mouth. It will eventually lead to dental illnesses like cavities, toothache, etc.
3) Heat
Your tooth will react to extreme heat temperature if it has underlying problems. For instance, the bacteria present in a decayed tooth take advantage of the warm weather and is followed by chronic inflammations in tissues around the tooth. It will trigger a severe toothache.
To be precise, the hot weather activates the untreated infections in a tooth and increases the pain in the tooth to a greater extent.
4) Increased risk of Micro injuries in teeth
The micro injuries that happen while playing or doing some physical activities will become worsen with the warm weather.
As it is vacation time, kids are interested in playing. Whether it is indoor or outdoor, they might fall and injure themselves. When they get micro injuries in teeth like chips, cracks over the teeth surface, it will not cause serious aftereffects in most cases.
In contrast, the repeated micro injuries over the teeth surfaces accompanied by hot temperatures will trigger problems like sensitive teeth.
Bottom line
In most cases, the summertime weather does not hurt our teeth directly but what you put your teeth in the increased heat temperature will increase the risk of such seasonal dental discomforts.
Keeping your teeth healthy in summer is also possible with activities like dehydrating yourselves with natural drinks instead of sugary drinks, keeping your teeth and gums clean, neglecting acidic foods along getting a mid-summer dental checkup.
Have queries or want more tips to keep your summer smile healthy? contact our dentists here.
