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Have you ever noticed how much you clench your teeth during a difficult workout? Though exercising is great for your body, it can ruin your teeth if you’re not careful. We’ve come up with a few easy tips to help you protect your teeth while you’re exercising. This way, you can make your workouts healthy for every part of your body!

Wear a Mouth Guard

When it comes to contact sports, like football, boxing or basketball, it’s important to wear a mouth guard. Mouth guards protect your teeth from breaking or getting knocked out if you get hit in the head. You can either get a mouth guard fitted for you by a dentist or buy a cheaper mouth guard from a sports store. These won’t fit as well as a mouth guard fitted by a dentist will, but they’re better than nothing.
Mouth guards shouldn’t only be used for contact sports. When you bike, run or lift weights, you may notice that you clench your teeth. Do this enough and you’ll wear down your teeth to their nerves. Wearing a mouth guard will help you to stop clenching and grinding your teeth against each other when you work out.

Drink Water Throughout Your Workout

Did you know that you produce less saliva when you exercise? A study published in the Scandinavian Journal of Medicine & Science in Sports found that saliva flow rates decreased significantly when athletes worked out. The athletes’ dry mouths put them at a higher risk of dental erosion, since saliva contains proteins and minerals that protect tooth enamel and help prevent tooth decay and gum disease.
While the athletes in this study exercise much more intensely than the average person, and for longer periods of time, it’s still important to ensure that your mouth stays healthy. Make sure to bring a bottle of water to the gym and drink from it throughout your workout. This should help to keep your teeth protected.

Avoid Sports Drinks

Believe it or not, sports drinks can be worse for your teeth than soda pop. Sports drinks contain high volumes of acids that wear away at the enamel on your teeth. When these acids are combined with a dry mouth during exercise, your teeth are in even more danger. Try replacing your sports drinks with water while you’re working out.

Take Out Your Retainer

If you’re doing an exercise that can cause your retainer to pop out and break, it’s best to take it out. You definitely don’t want to stop your teeth-straightening progress because of a broken retainer. Make sure to replace it right after your done with your activity.
We hope these tips help to keep your teeth safe while you’re working hard at the gym. If you have any more questions about oral health and exercise, feel free to write to us on Facebook! We would love to hear from you.

From extreme temperatures to hungry bacteria, enamel protects your teeth from all of the bad stuff out there. This hard mineralized surface on your teeth keeps them looking and feeling great. But unfortunately, over time, your enamel can chip, break off and erode. Unlike most other parts of your body, enamel doesn’t grow back naturally because it doesn’t have any living cells. Once it’s gone, it’s gone forever.

Let’s take a look at what causes enamel to wear away and what happens when it’s eroding so that you can do your best to prevent it.

What Causes Your Enamel to Wear Away?

Your enamel’s two biggest enemies are acids and physical contact. Here are some of the most common reasons why it wears away over time.

• Lack of saliva. Your saliva keeps your enamel strong and dilutes acid. Smoking can reduce your saliva secretion, causing the mineralized surface of your teeth to erode.
• Soda pop and fruit drinks. Sodas and even some fruit drinks are filled with acids that eat away at your teeth.
• Acid reflux. If you suffer from acid reflux, your stomach acid may cause enamel erosion.
• Your medication. Some medications, such as aspirin and asthma medication, can erode your teeth.
• What you eat. If you have a high sugar and starch diet, you could be hurting your teeth.
• Teeth grinding. Clenching or grinding your teeth can damage your enamel over time.
• Bad habits. If you bite your nails, chew tobacco, bite pens, brush your teeth too hard or floss the wrong way, you’re probably wearing down your enamel.
• Tooth fractures. You can physically break off your enamel by fracturing your tooth.

What Are Some Symptoms of Enamel Erosion?

Once you identify that erosion is happening, you can work to prevent it and treat it. Here are a few common symptoms of enamel erosion:

• Yellowing teeth.
• Sensitivity to sugary food and extremely hot or cold food. This sensitivity becomes more painful and severe as erosion gets worse.
• Regular cracks, chips and jagged edges in your teeth.
• Dents in your teeth.

What Can You Do To Help Your Teeth?

Dental problems like enamel erosion are normally pretty easy to prevent. If you practice proper hygiene by flossing every day and brushing your teeth twice a day with toothpaste that contains fluoride, you’re on a path to having healthy teeth. Using a mouthwash that contains fluoride will also help, as fluoride helps to strengthen your enamel. If you’re looking for an easier way to help, drinking water will lubricate the mouth and rinse acidity away, helping to balance PH levels in the mouth. Of course, you should also try to avoid any actions that cause your enamel to wear away, like the ones we listed out earlier in the article.
Just because you’re enamel can’t grow back doesn’t mean it can’t be treated. If you already have trouble with your teeth, you may be interested in our Enamel Remineralization Treatment. This treatment helps to improve the appearance, sensitivity and strength of your teeth with calcium phosphate, sodium fluoride and recaldent. Feel free to contact Chicago’s #1 dentistry, Water Tower Dental Care, to learn more.

It can be pretty alarming to wake up and notice that your gums are getting darker. After all, they’re a huge part of your smile. Gum discoloration can be a natural occurrence, or they can be a sign of serious health problems that need to be addressed immediately. Thankfully, there are steps you can take to treat your discolored or black gums and get them looking healthy again, depending on the cause. Here are a few of the most common treatment options for gum discoloration.

Treatments for Dark or Black Gums

Nothing! Love Your Gums for Their Natural Color

Some people are born with naturally darker gums than others. It’s completely normal. Gum color varies just like skin color does. If you have a darker skin tone, it’s likely you have darker gums because your body produces more melanin. You don’t need any treatment - your gums are healthy and beautiful just the way they are!

Gum Disease Therapy

If your gums suddenly get darker or turn black over time, it’s likely you have a problem. One very serious issue that causes black discoloration is acute necrotizing periodontal disease, also known as black gum disease. When you have this disease, your gum tissue becomes black as it dies, or experiences necrosis. Along with a change in color, you may notice severe pain, a foul smell and bleeding gums. If you don’t treat black gum disease, it can spread to your cartilage and then your bone. Not good.

Your dentist can treat periodontal disease with gum disease therapy. A gum disease specialist will work on fixing damage to your gum tissue, teeth and bones with surgical and/or non-surgical procedures to alleviate infection and promote gum and tooth reattachment. The exact treatment will depend on the severity of gum disease.

Ask Your Doctor For Alternative Medications

Some types of medication are known to cause gum discoloration. These include minocycline, tricyclic antidepressants and metal-based crown fillings. Though they don’t necessarily harm your gums, they can cause areas of black or grey pigmentation, which doesn’t look to great. If your gums start changing color after you begin taking new medication, speak with your doctor to find out about the medication’s side effects. If gum discoloration is a known side effect, ask your doctor about alternative medications.

Put Out Your Cigarette Once and For All

Along with increasing your risk of getting gum disease, tooth discoloration, oral cancer and many other oral problems, the chemicals in cigarettes can cause gum discoloration. The best thing you can do for your mouth, both cosmetically and for its health, is to stop smoking once and for all. And don’t think e-cigarettes are good for your mouth either. When you stop smoking and vaping, you’re helping your mouth look and feel as healthy as possible for as long as possible.

Treatments for White Gums

Thrush Treatment

If you notice white discoloration in the form of lesions on your gums, you may have thrush. Thrush is a mouth infection caused by fungus. You might run into this problem if you’re stressed, get certain illnesses or take particular medications. Your dentist will provide treatment based on your age and the cause of the thrush. Many times, your dentist will just scrape the fungus from your gums and tell you how to prevent it from regrowing in the future. They may also refer you to a doctor for further treatment.

Leukoplakia Treatment

Another cause of white patches developing on your gums is leukoplakia, a precancerous condition that usually stems from smoking or alcohol consumption. Stopping both of those activities may completely take care of the patch. If that doesn’t work, your dentist may remove the patch with a scalpel, laser or freezing methods. This can help to reduce the risk of developing mouth cancer. If you have leukoplakia, it’s important to check in with your dentist regularly so they can monitor your condition.

Experiencing gum discoloration? Come on into Water Tower Dental Care, Chicago’s #1 general and cosmetic dentist! Our friendly staff will take a look at your gums to find out the cause of the change in color and the best treatment to fix it. You can meet our doctors before you come in here!

Nobody likes having crooked teeth. They don’t give you the most beautiful smile in the world and they’re hard to take care of. Ironically, nobody really likes wearing braces to straighten their crooked teeth either, for pretty much the same reasons. At Water Tower Dental Care, we have a better solution to straighten your smile: Invisalign. Invisalign clear braces are easy to clean, effective and pretty much invisible to the eye.

How Invisalign Works

Invisalign was designed to be as easy as possible. The invisible aligners, which look like teeth-whitening trays, are custom made for your teeth. As a result, they fit comfortably in your mouth. You’re given a series of these aligners throughout the treatment process - typically one every two weeks. Each aligner will gently reposition your teeth into their proper place. Your doctor controls the timing in which each tooth is moved and maps out exactly where your teeth should be.
Treatment time varies from patient to patient, but the average timeline to correct your teeth alignment with Invisalign is only about 12 months. During this time, you’ll want to wear the aligners for about 20 to 22 hours every day.

Benefits of Invisalign Compared to Braces for Fixing Crooked Teeth

At Water Tower Dental Care, we’re big advocates of Invisalign. Here are just a few reasons why you might like Invisalign more than traditional braces.

• Invisalign is virtually invisible, with no unsightly brackets or wires
• It’s incredibly easy to clean. All you have to do is pop off your aligners and clean them with the Invisalign Cleaning system, which you can purchase at our office, or with lukewarm water and a brush.
• Invisalign isn’t painful. Instead, it fits comfortably over your teeth and gently repositions them over time.
• You’ll have no food restrictions. You can take off your Invisalign braces and chew all the gum you want!
• Your teeth are easy to clean. It can be tough to clean all of your teeth with wires and brackets in the way. With Invisalign, you can remove the aligners in the morning and evening for easy access to your teeth.
• Pop them off for big events. It’s best to wear your aligners as much as possible. But if you have a big event, you can always take off your aligners and put them back on later.
• They work as fast as traditional braces. On average, treatment time for patients wearing Invisalign is only 12 months.

Health Problems Caused by Crooked Teeth

Crooked teeth don’t only look bad. They also hurt your oral health, which Invisalign can help with. Here are a handful of problems caused by crooked teeth that you may not know about.

• Gum Disease. When your teeth aren’t aligned well, your gums aren’t supporting them as securely as if they were straight. This means your gums are less healthy and strong, and more likely to develop periodontal disease.
• Tooth Decay. Plaque can build up in spots that you can’t see when you have severely crooked teeth. Untouched plaque will lead to bacteria eating away at your teeth over time.
• Harder to clean. It’s hard to properly floss and brush when you have crooked teeth. If you can’t reach your gums or specific places on your teeth while cleaning, you’re more likely to develop cavities, gum disease and other oral health problems.
• Worse Health Overall. Keeping your teeth and gums healthy means keeping the rest of your body healthy as well. Oral infection and bad oral health may lead or contribute to cardiovascular disease, Alzheimer’s disease, endocarditis, and more, according to Mayo Clinic.

Interested in learning more about Invisalign? We here at Water Tower Dental Care are Invisalign experts. Feel free to contact us to learn more about this amazing treatment. We will be more than happy to help put you on a path to the straight smile of your dreams, without the hassle of traditional braces.