Thursday, December 13, 2012

Bad Teeth...Bad Grades!

A recent study at USC and published in the Journal of Public Health verifies that children with poor oral health have, on average, lower grades. They also miss more days of school due to tooth aches and dental appointments. It also pointed out that parents of these students miss more days of work due to the need to care for their children's dental appointments.

One of the tragedies here is to know this is so simple to prevent, though without adequate information, parents find it difficult to accomplish. An early start (age 1) with good instruction will demonstrate to parents how simple it is to give children an excellent start to a lifetime of good oral health.  Cavity free, healthy, beautiful smiles.

The most significant challenge facing parents and making difficult the simple task of creating good oral health is the food culture of modern society. It starts as infants when parents wean their children from milk/formula to juice rather than water.  Two generations of mis-information have led our culture to believe juice is healthy.  In some respects juice is worse than a cola!   For more information on creating healthy smiles for a lifetime visit our website.

1 comment:

  1. This is so interesting. I never knew there was any correlation between oral health and grades! I'm glad my parents taught me early on to get in a habit of brushing twice a day. I wonder if any dentist in Oakville has heard of this study. I think it is important to get this information out there so that more people can be aware of the seriousness of bad oral health. Thanks for sharing this info!

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Welcome to Winning With Smiles - Pediatric Dentistry. We are dedicated to cavity free, healthy beautiful smiles. We look forward to the opportunity to share with you what we know about creating optimal oral health for growing children. We understand oral health is closely tied to general health and like to work closely with the family physician. Oral health is also closely tied to family life and lifestyle. That is why we like to have the family involved with dental appointments. What we teach our patients works best if understood and supported by the family and will benefit the family as well. We enjoy working with parent and siblings present. We have been learning from families since 1974. With the family present, open questions lead to family learning. We are dedicated to your oral health.