DENTAL staff often stress the importance of routinely brushing and flossing your teeth.
And while they do their best to advise patients, things don't always pan out well, with patients sometimes not keeping up with oral hygiene.
In an exclusive chat with the U.S. Sun, a dental assistant, who has asked to remain anonymous, has shared how dental staff are able to tell when you've only given your teeth a good cleaning for your appointment.
It turns out there's a clear sign.
"I know hygienists, they measure your gum pockets," she began.
"So there's a numbering system that we can measure your gum pockets [with] and it tells us the health of your gums.
"So if your gums are all the way in like fives and sixes, that means your gum health is not very good.
"And even if you brushed and flossed right before this appointment, clearly you haven't been doing it for the past six months cause your gums are red and inflamed."
She cited some other ways they can tell when your oral hygiene has taken a back seat.
"If we are brushing, flossing, and cleaning it and your gums start to get inflamed and puffy or they start bleeding, then clearly you haven't been taking care of your teeth for the past, you know, six months.
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"Getting inflamed and puffing and bleeding and looking red and irritated are signs that you don't clean them well very often," she concluded.
Previously, a dental assistant also shared one of the oddest things they had ever come across while in the practice.
They said: "So when a hygienist will take the hard plaque off of their teeth, [some patients] get upset that their teeth [become] sensitive [and feel] like we did something [bad] to their teeth.
"If you have hard plaque on your teeth and then we take it away, your teeth are gonna be sensitive. They're gonna be wobbly because you've had gum disease for 20, 30, 40 years. So of course they're gonna be wiggling.
"Cause the thing that was holding them together, we took off cause it needed to be taken off – so [the patients] get like mad when people are just trying to do their job."
In one such instance, a woman was not satisfied after a deep cleaning of her teeth – and demanded it be reversed.
"A lady literally came in one day, she was mad that her teeth were wiggling 'cause we took the hard plaque off.
"And then she was asking [us] to put the plaque back on her."
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