Is Your Job Affecting Your Oral Health?

You might think that your profession isn’t affecting your teeth but you could be wrong.

You don’t have to work in a sweet factory or other premises where too many “sweet treats” might be available to be at risk from tooth decay and gun disease. The same is also true when you’re sat at a desk in an office and where similar temptations to grab another biscuit or chocolate also exist.

In fact, there are a number of things associated with sedentary jobs that can cause significant harm to your oral health. We will take a look at some of those in today’s blog to help you to spot them and hopefully minimise any harmful impact.

Snacking

Anyone who has worked in an office, and especially a high pressure one, will be all too aware of the number of times that a proper meal has to be skipped in order to hit a deadline. This often means getting your daily sustenance from a range of fast foods and often cakes and other sugary foods and drinks to give us the energy to complete our tasks. In some cases, we may work late too and rather than cook a healthy meal when we get home, opt for a ready meal or takeaway instead. These are often unhealthy and also, perhaps surprisingly, sometimes contain a significant amount of sugar too.

Stress

We are sure that there are many patients of our Epsom dentist who have stressful jobs. Not only can this lead to snacking as mentioned above, but stress can lead to bruxism. This is the grinding of teeth that often happens whilst we are asleep. This can impact our teeth in a number of ways. At an extreme level, the teeth can badly break. More often though, enamel erosion takes place and decay becomes more likely as does overly sensitive teeth. Bruxism can also lead to jaw problems such as TMJ.

Sedentary lifestyle

People that live active lives tend to be healthier, with more oxygen being pumped around their body while they move. Those of us who remain largely stationery, and often seated, are less likely to have this and it can lead to us feeling ‘sluggish’ throughout the day (often resulting in even more sugary foods to give us energy!) The reduction of blood flow can slow down the healing of any infection and that includes those of the mouth. This is yet another potential factor in gum disease and other gum and oral cavity infections.

Dehydration

While most of us know that drinking water is not only good for our overall health, but also to keep our gums healthy; many of us drink tea and coffee most of the time we are in the office. These are both diuretics and can leave us feeling dehydrated. Readers of the Clocktower Dental, Implant & Facial Centre blogs will be aware that this can lead to a dry mouth which allows oral bacteria to grow more rapidly and threaten the health of our gums. Make sure you take water to work with you so that it is there to help you to avoid becoming dehydrated.

Cross contamination

Within our Epsom dental practice, a lot of care is taken to prevent cross infection; i.e. the spreading of bacteria and viruses between patient and dentist. Within an office environment, this rarely happens. People come in to work with colds and sometimes flu. They often share mugs and other utensils too which perhaps don’t get washed as well as they would at home. Illnesses which might result can cause us to become run down and probably eat less healthily as well as perhaps skipping cleaning our teeth due to tiredness.

Missing appointments

Work schedules, deadlines and business meetings are just a few of the things that can crop up at short notice. From time to time, this will mean cancelling other appointments that we might have booked for that time. Unfortunately, this can affect your dental appointment too. Even if you receive very short notice of an important meeting just half an hour before your dental appointment is due, please do let us know if you really can’t make it. It is better to offer it to someone else rather than nobody turning up at their appointed time. You should also make sure that you rebook your appointment as soon as you possibly can with us in order to stay on track with your regular, and important, oral check ups.

If you monitor yourself during a typical work day in an office, you might be surprised to notice how many things happen which are potentially harmful to your oral health. Where possible, you should adjust these as best as you can, and also make sure that you have regular check ups and hygienist appointments booked at the Clocktower Dental, Implant & Facial Centre. If you are unsure, or if you want to book an appointment with us, please do so by calling us today on 01372 720136.