How Often Should You Visit the Dentist?
If you feel any pain in your teeth or gums, you should visit your dentist. But what if you are not experiencing dental problems? How often should you visit your dentist then?
Keeping a regular and consistent schedule of dental visits might be challenging. You might not have a dentist conveniently located close to you. You could feel anxious about visiting the dentist, perhaps because of an experience. You might also be concerned about fitting regular dental care into your budget.
These common reasons for missing routine dental visits are not trivial. But seeing your dentist regularly, pain or no pain, problems or no problems, is critical to your continued oral health and your overall health.
How Often Should You Go to the Dentist for Checkups?
The health industry strongly recommends that you should visit your dentist twice a year for consistent preventative exams. Twice-yearly appointments give you and your dentist the best advantage in keeping your teeth and gums clean and healthy.
Plaque, the sticky clear film caused when bacteria, acid, food particles, and saliva combine, is constantly forming and starts accumulating your teeth immediately after eating. Within just a day or two, unremoved plaque hardens into tartar, which is also called calculus. Tartar leads to both tooth decay and gum disease.
Regular daily brushing and flossing at home will remove plaque, but not all of it. Only your dentist, using a dental scraper, can remove plaque once it is hardened into tartar. Routine dental cleaning is an essential line of defense against cavities forming and gum disease.
Is There More Done at a Regular Visit then Cleaning?
Having your teeth cleaned is not the only good reason to visit your dentist regularly.
- Detect oral health issues before they progress- Your dentist can identify warning signs you might not spot on your own. For example, you could have a cavity so small it does not need more attention than brushing and flossing, or a prescription fluoride. If you had missed your routine cleaning, you would not have known about this decay until it became more serious.
- Screen for oral, head, and neck cancers- Your dentist looks for symptoms of more than tooth decay and gum disease. During your regular dental cleaning visit, they will exam and screen you for mouth, head, and neck cancers. The sooner your dentist detects any signs of oral cancer, the better your odds of receiving effective treatment with successful outcomes.
- Save money long-term with timely dental treatment- When your dentist identifies and treats dental problems early, you are much more likely to be spared both the physical and financial agony of complicated and prolonged treatment in the future.
Who Should See a Dentist More Often Than Every Six Months?
The twice-a-year dental visit recommendation is a solid baseline, but your individual health situation will determine how often you need to see your dentist.
You may need to see your dentist every three months or more if you:
- Have either tooth decay or gum disease, or a history of either.
- Use alcohol and tobacco products consistently.
- Have immune systems that have weakened.
- Have diabetes or other chronic health conditions.
- Are pregnant.
All these conditions, among others, can put you at higher risk of problems. Proactive and preventive monitoring and treatment will help keep you in the best possible oral health.