Your saliva is the hidden star of your mouth. It helps keep your teeth and gums healthy. This wonderful fluid constantly washes over your gums and teeth, keeping them safe and your mouth feeling good.
Let us learn more about the amazing things saliva can do and how important it is for your oral health to have a steady flow. Fresno family dentistry is a good place to look for a family dentist if you want to keep your teeth in good shape.
Saliva is a multitasking marvel in your mouth.
There is more to saliva than just spit. It is a complicated mix of water, mucus, enzymes, and chemicals that help your teeth do many important things. Take a look at some of its superpowers:
- Hydration: Saliva makes your mouth hydrated and fresh. It gets rid of bits of food and keeps your mouth from feeling dry and itchy.
- Helps in digestion: Enzymes in saliva break down the starches in food, starting the digestive process before the food even gets to your gut.
- Helps with taste: Your saliva breaks down food bits so you can properly taste your food.
- Aids in swallowing: Saliva lubricates the food, which makes it easy to swallow.
- Protects you from germs: Saliva is full of antibiotic qualities that help fight the bad germs in your mouth. If you do not get rid of these germs, they can lead to cavities and gum disease. Also, saliva helps get rid of bits of food that these bacteria love to eat.
- Minerals: Your saliva contains minerals like calcium and phosphate that are good for your teeth and help keep enamel strong and cavities away.
You get a dry mouth when saliva flow decreases.
If your mouth does not make enough saliva, you may develop a dry mouth, which can be very bad for your oral health. This is why:
- Higher chance of getting cavities: Harmful germs can grow without saliva to clean and kill them, which can cause cavities.
- Gum disease: More and more people are getting gum disease. Dry mouth can make gum disease worse by weakening the mouth’s natural defenses against germs.
- Bad breath: Saliva helps get rid of the bits of food that make your breath smell bad. A dry mouth can make bad breath worse.
The causes of dry mouth.
Dry mouth can be caused by a number of things, such as:
- Medicines: A lot of medicines, like some antidepressants, decongestants, and blood pressure medicines, can make your mouth dry as a side effect.
- Medical conditions: Diabetes and Sjogren’s syndrome are two medical conditions that can make it hard to make saliva.
- Age: As we get older, our saliva output may easily go down.
- Habits: Smoking, not drinking enough water, and drinking too much alcohol can all cause dry mouth.
Strategies to keep your saliva flowing and have a healthy mouth.
If you have a dry mouth that will not go away, here are some ways to keep your mouth hydrated and encourage healthy saliva flow:
- Remember to stay hydrated: Drinking a lot of water throughout the day is important for making spit. Try to drink eight glasses of water every day.
- Sugar-free gum: Chewing sugar-free gum makes your mouth stay hydrated by making you salivate.
- Substitutes for saliva can help: Over-the-counter saliva replacements can help with dry mouth complaints for a short time.
- Medications: If your medications are making your mouth dry, talk to your doctor about switching drugs or changing the amount you take.
- Changes to your lifestyle: Drinking too much alcohol and coffee can dehydrate you and make your dry mouth worse. Giving up smoking can also help your mouth make more saliva.
Saliva is important for keeping your mouth healthy because it fights infections, makes swallowing better, and speeds up the healing of wounds. To avoid teeth and gum disease, it is important to keep your saliva flow healthy.
