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Your mouth is one of the most used parts of your body - you use it to speak and to eat, and sometimes you use it to breathe when your nose is all stuffed up with a cold and congestion! And because of that, it tends to be one of the fastest naturally healing places in your body, but that doesn’t mean it’s totally capable of taking care of itself. 

Which is why it’s important to look up just how important your oral health is, and why it’s important to take care of your gums and your tongue and your teeth. Quite a few problems can crop up from irregular brushing or eating the wrong kinds of food a little too often, and now’s your chance to put things right. 

So here are some points to keep in mind the next time you think about skipping a dentist appointment. It’s important to keep in touch with your health, and attend as many regular check ups as possible, but don’t let yourself forget about your mouth in all that mess! 

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The Nerves Stretch Right Up to Your Brain

There are a lot of nerves in your mouth, that connect very closely to your brain and your spinal cord. It’s why toothaches and gum problems can be so damn painful! When you’ve got a whole branching network of nerves right underneath the source of all your thoughts and feelings, it’s going to hurt like hell when there’s an underlying problem. 

It’s why the pain we experience in our teeth and gums is often nothing to do with any mouth problems. Sometimes it’s just a headache that’s radiating that far down, thanks to the amount of cranial nerves that exist in your facial region. 

Some people have nerve endings very close to the surface of their teeth, and some people have them set deep behind them - it’s why some of us have no idea there’s a cavity in a molar, and why some of us are extremely sensitive to cold ice cream. And it’s why taking care of your oral health is so important; those nerves hiding behind your teeth are incredibly crucial to brain and body function. 

Your Mouth is Connected to a Lot of Life’s Problems

A lot of diseases can originate in the mouth. There's a lot of symptoms for serious infections or diseases that show up in the mouth, such as Diabetes, and if you manage to notice them ahead of time, it’s a lot easier to take care of yourself in the long run. 

We all know what plaque is, and what it looks like, and it can be quite dangerous for your oral health if you let it build up too much. Being able to brush and/or floss on a regular basis makes sure little to no bacteria makes its way into your bloodstream, simply because these preventative measures, combined with the magic of saliva, keep invaders away from the back of your throat and beyond. 

If you get to know how your oral health works, and you get comfortable with visiting a dentist on a regular basis, you’ll have nothing to fear from your mouth. 

You’ll Keep Your Teeth For So Much Longer!

Your teeth are useful to you for a variety of reasons. Of course, they’re needed for chewing and eating, but they also help you to speak and form the right words for whatever you’re trying to say. And when you take care of your oral health, you’ll keep your teeth for so much longer than your parents or grandparents may have! 

If you manage to brush twice a day, and you’re able to keep to a low sugar diet, you’ll be able to maintain a good sense of oral health and hygiene. Of course, there’s going to be quite a few outliers to this rule, and teeth and gum health can go up and down for all kinds of reasons, but it really is basic skills like that that help to keep tooth crown procedures to a minimum. If you’re someone who’s afraid of the dentist, prevention is always the best course of action to take! 

Your oral health has a lot to answer for, and you have a lot to do to take care of it. Thankfully, using a toothbrush and/or mouthwash is surprisingly easy, so dentistry issues can be few and far between. But make sure you know the run on effects of bad oral health.