If you have teeth, you need to be concerned about the dangers of decay. One of the methods for combating that insidious menace is by applying a dental sealant to keep those hard-to-reach areas from collecting bacteria and causing gum disease and infection. All of these things can bring on tooth decay.
But how do sealants work and what exactly are they? Glad you asked…
Dental sealants
When you have a sealant placed onto your tooth, you are basically having a thin layer of plastic coating applied to the surface for the purposes of bonding the various grooves and fissures that exist. But fissures are a bad thing, right? Wrong. Many of your teeth have natural gaps in the areas where you do most of your chewing.
This brings us back to the main reason why sealants are so important for keeping decay at bay. Those crevices are prone to an increase in bacteria development since food particles can get caught in those chewing grooves.
When that occurs, your teeth are at a higher risk for infections and erosion. But when you have a sealant added to the exterior, you can greatly reduce these risks.
Routine maintenance
Even with a sealant applied to your teeth, you must always practice good dental hygiene. That means brushing and flossing after every meal and before you go to bed. Even the most dedicated among us will have a tough time cleaning out all of the particles from the crevices and pits in the chewing regions of your teeth.
A sealant can minimize the damage missed particles can have on a tooth’s exterior enamel which can easily be worn away by bacteria left behind to rot in the grooves of the tooth. Plaque build-up in these areas can set in and remain there until enough of the tooth erodes into a cavity.
But a sealant can act as a protective layer to keep the enamel from being worn off from an accumulation of tartar, plaque, and the germs that come with them.
Application procedures
Perhaps the most important thing to know is that having a sealant applied to your teeth does not hurt. In fact, you might not even feel any discomfort at all. The dentist simply preps the surface of the tooth that will be sealed. The sealant is applied to the tooth and then exposed to light, which will help the sealant bond properly with the tooth’s surface.
Once the procedure is finished, you can eat and chew as you normally would before you had the sealant applied. It may be a few years down the road again before you need to have it re-applied, but that depends on the force with which you usually chew.
