Billions of visitors to the dentist in Mackay
As you go about your daily business, it probably never crosses your mind that you are not alone. Accompanying you as you go to school, college or work, to your sports activities, at home and as your sleep are billions of other invisible creatures. They live on your skin, in your gut, and in your mouth. Yes, when you bring your mouth to the dentist in Mackay, it’s not just your teeth and tongue that come along, about 20 billion microbes come along for the ride.
A whole new world
20 billion microbes are a whole world in themselves. Scientists call this the human oral biome, and it contains 500-650 different species of microbes. Some are good, some are bad, some don’t seem to do anything much, but they all hang out and reproduce in your mouth. Some only take 20 minutes to make new copies of themselves in ideal conditions. You may wonder how come you don’t end up with a mouth stuffed so full of microbes that you can’t even speak. The answer is that every time you swallow, about 100 million microbes go down the hatch with your spit; and you swallow about one litre of saliva a day.
Sticky teeth?
No wonder then that some microbes cling on for dear life to the surfaces inside your mouth. One clinger is Streptococcus mutans. This is the bacterium that we are the most aware of. It forms that sticky layer that builds up on our teeth during the day; we call it plaque. The trouble with this little critter is that it feeds on sugars in our saliva and then gives off acids. Because it clings to the teeth, gums and cheek linings, these acids come into direct contact with our mouth before they get diluted by our saliva. That’s why we get tooth decay and gum disease. They are caused by the acids given off by plaque.
If you don’t remove your plaque, it hardens into a chalky substance called calculus, but the living plaque next to your teeth still give off acids.
So book an appointment with Walkerston Dental in Walkerston, your dentist in Mackay, so we can help deal with your plaque.
