The secret to a beautiful smile is not in how white your teeth are. Even while you envy celebrities with Hollywood smiles, you must know that having a beautiful smile takes work. This kind of investment involves diligently caring for your teeth at home but also involving a dental expert in your journey to excellent oral health.

When people talk about dental exams, they only refer to the tests that are conducted when they have underlying oral problems that need treatment. However, oral checkups go beyond tests for prognosis.

What Are Dental Exams?

They are oral checkups conducted periodically by dental experts to monitor and manage good oral health for patients. The checkups are often conducted twice a year. They are not done when there is an underlying problem to treat. In fact, the essence of oral checkups is to ensure that you do not need to seek dental treatments. It, therefore, serves as a proactive measure to maintain teeth as healthy, at all times.

What Do Oral Checkups Entail?

Few people understand the essence of dental exams. Some think of the checkups as consultation sessions with dental experts, while others expect invasive tests and analysis of oral health.

The processes involved in a checkup for your oral cavity involve physical exams as the primary step. The exam will allow your dentist to check all areas of your mouth to detect any anomaly if any. Should there be a need to examine your oral cavity further, the dentist may take to digital measures, which involve dental x-rays and scans. However, these are not usually performed for every checkup, but rather, are only used on a need basis.

The checkup sessions with your dentist can be short and brief or be long and detailed. It depends on how often you visit your dentist. Based on your previous checkup, your dentist will determine whether or not you need a thorough exam or a simple checkup.

Benefits of General Dental Checkups

Whether you realize it or not, making a dentist near you your best has incredible benefits for your oral health. Regular dental exams have the following advantages:

  1. Early detection of dental problems – an infection left untreated for a time progresses and becomes a complex oral problem, sometimes requiring urgent dental care. With dental checkups, however, a dentist will always detect potential problems in your mouth early. Any signs of inflammation, reddening or any other anomalies can be noted in the early stages.
  2. Early diagnosis and treatment – it is not enough to only detect a potential risk of infection in your mouth. Catching an infection early, diagnosing or and treating it appropriately is one of the crucial reasons why dental exams exist.
  3. Building up a medical record – the more times you interact with your dentist, the more information you exchange about your oral health. This allows your dentist to establish a medical record for your dental health, which comes in handy for other medical treatments.
  4. Preventing future dental procedures – annual dental checkups may not seem to do much for you, especially when there isn’t an oral problem caught during those sessions. However, they are important when it comes to preventing the need for future dental treatments. Many patients who have to undertake procedures like root canal therapies, orthodontics, dental extractions, to mention a few, do so because of underplaying the importance of regular dental exams. When a Monmouth Junction dentist keeps track of your oral cavity, he/she ensures that you never have to worry about getting other treatments in the future.
  5. Boosting oral hygiene – a dentist will tell you of the need to have your teeth professionally cleaned during one of those dental exams. This will be an effort to remove any plaque and tartar from your teeth, to help sustain excellent oral health.
  6. Improving your nutrition and overall body health – dentists are not only concerned about the health of your teeth. They look into other factors that may affect your oral cavity and even your body. This is why an oral checkup can result in nutritional counseling, where your dentist advises you on the importance of food choices. Besides, the checkup can help identify other health problems you have, which may indirectly affect your oral health, like diabetes, sleep apnea, jaw problems, to mention a few.

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