(By Dotun Onimole)
A Dental Surgeon at Ladoke Akintola University Teaching Hospital (LAUTH), Osogbo, Juliet Ogunlela, said that fast food posed threat to oral hygiene in children.
Ms. Ogunlela, who spoke with the News Agency of Nigeria in Osogbo, said diet had a lot of effect on the dental health of humans, especially, children.
‘’In recent years, diet has changed with children; they even prefer to be fed with fast food that gets quite sticky in the mouth. To worsen the matter, many parents do not have the time to monitor their children when they are brushing their teeth.”
‘’Basically, brushing the teeth is to remove the left-over from the mouth, and to clean the teeth of the thin layer of bacteria. When this is not properly done, mouth odour is inevitable and it could lead to other serious dental problems,” Ms. Ogunlela said.
She therefore advised parents to be more concerned with what their children consumed.
‘’The best time to brush the teeth is after the last meal at night, and after breakfast. This is because most tooth-pastes do not offer more than 12 hours protection’’, she said.
Ms. Ogunlela also noted that some people were scared of paying regular visits to Dentists for fear of their teeth being removed.
She urged people to always be visiting dentists, saying that “removal of the teeth is not the only solution to dental problems.”
“An early diagnosis of oral problems goes a long way in making correction and treatment easier.”
‘”I will advise all Nigerians to make it a point of duty to visit the dentist every 6 months,” she said.
