The Best Dental Care Practices For Athletes

By | March 21, 2025

The Best Dental Care Practices For Athletes – This month is National Children’s Dental Health Month. Find ways to maintain and improve your child’s oral health.

February is national children’s dental health month – an opportunity for parents and guardians of young children to get to know the best practices of oral hygiene and strategies to prevent dental damage.

The Best Dental Care Practices For Athletes

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, tooth decay is one of the most common chronic diseases in children. Parents play an important role in protecting their children’s smiles, says Stephen Mitchell, DMD, assistant professor and pediatric dentist at the University of Alabama at Birmingham School of Dentistry. Mitchell recommends building a strong foundation for good oral hygiene by helping children maintain a balanced diet, brushing and flossing every day, and ensuring regular dental checkups.

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“When we sleep, our mouth dries out, which allows bacteria called plaque to grow. We want to remove as much plaque as possible from our teeth before we go to bed,” he said.

“This is where bacteria like to hide,” Mitchell said. “Usually you have to pull your lower lip down to get the toothbrush to reach the gums of the lower teeth.”

Mitchell recommends that parents supervise brushing until children develop good hand-eye coordination, which is the key to effective brushing.

“Most kids aren’t ready to brush their own teeth until they’re six or seven years old,” says Mitchell. “Before that, let your child practice brushing their teeth; but then walk behind them to clean their teeth.”

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Another important practice is flossing, which should be done at least once a day. “The toothbrush can’t get between the teeth, so flossing is the only way to remove bacteria from between the teeth,” says Mitchell.

Tooth decay is a chronic disease that occurs over a long period of time, caused in part by repeated exposure to sugary foods. Therefore, controlling the consumption of sugary foods is key to preventing tooth decay.

“While brushing and flossing help prevent cavities, the best way to prevent cavities is to limit the amount of sugary foods your child eats each day,” says Mitchell. “It is commonly believed that candy can cause tooth decay; but sweetened beverages such as juice, sodas, and flavored milk seem to cause more tooth decay in my patients.”

If your child has a dental injury, call the dentist immediately. Dentistry offers high-quality, comprehensive general and special dental care for you and your family. Book an appointment today at /dentology.

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“Eating candy in moderation is not a bad thing,” Mitchell said. “Glutinous and sour candies left in the mouth for a long time are usually the most dangerous, while fast-melting chocolate damages the teeth the least. However, if parents really want to reduce the risk of tooth decay, cut back on sweetened beverages.”

Artificial sweeteners such as sucralose, stevia or aspartame do not cause tooth decay. So another way to reduce the risk of developing cavities is to switch drinks to products sweetened with such sweeteners.

Dental trauma is physical damage to the teeth, gums, bone supporting the socket, or soft tissues of the mouth, including the lips and tongue.

When playing sports such as softball or baseball, the risk of tooth injury is very high. Mitchell and the American Academy of Pediatric Dentistry recommend wearing a mouth guard in all sports where it is allowed. If a permanent tooth is removed, time is critical.

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“If a tooth can be reset in less than 30 minutes, there is a better chance of achieving a better result,” he said. “Putting the tooth in milk immediately increases the time significantly.”

Dentistry offers high-quality, comprehensive general and special dental care for you and your family. Make an appointment with the dentist today.

Is equal opportunity/affirmative action, faith, gender identity and expression, and sexual orientation. also encourages applications from people with disabilities and veterans. Oral health has been and continues to be an important health issue for the approximately 6.5 million people with intellectual and developmental disabilities (I/DD) in the United States who do not have access to the dental care they need.  

Despite some progress over the years, there are still significant disparities in oral health care between people with I/DD and the general population. Economic barriers, lack of properly trained dentists (less than 10% of all dentists treat patients with disabilities), limited access to dental clinics, lack of funding from Medicare and Medicaid, and the patients themselves create significant challenges to providing dental services. convey. (

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The purpose of the last part of this statement is not to blame individuals, but to highlight the inaccessibility of the entire system

).  However, there are programs and strategies that can help reduce the severity of these barriers and reduce these health disparities. Read this article by Michael Milano, DMD to learn more.

The Oregon Health and Disability Office and the university’s Center of Excellence on Developmental Disabilities, along with our many partners, are committed to raising awareness and working to address and reduce dental health disparities in this mouth. 

For more information on the two webinars and to access the archived webinars, click the links below. 

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Oral Problems Part 1: Intended Audience: Individuals with I/DD and other disabilities, their families and disability service provider support staff, dental professionals and students. Watch the recorded webinar here. Watch the recording here.

Oral questions Part 2: Intended audience: dental hygienists, other dental professionals and dental students. (May also be of interest to people with I/DD and other disabilities, their families, and support staff of disability service providers.) CEUs are available to dental hygienists, dentists, and other medical professionals. Watch the recorded webinar here. To access the webinar, click on the top bar “SoD-Mouth Oral Issues Webinar” dated June 10. To get a CDE, go to  /cde and register for the course.

Due to the pandemic, we have postponed the implementation of this program.  We are currently working with our key partners to determine how we can bring this program to Oregon in a virtual or online format. The description below is related to the personal format that we intend to provide where possible. Please email us if you have any questions or would like to be updated on our progress.

Oral Health Kansas has partnered with the Kansas Health and Disability Program at the University of Kansas to create a program designed for adults with intellectual and developmental disabilities (I/DD) to feel confident about keeping their teeth and mouth healthy.  The program offers a 90-minute interactive workshop that is fun, engaging, and allows I/DD participants and their support staff to practice oral health improvement concepts.  The workshop highlighted the importance of good oral health in reducing the risk of oral disease and its importance to overall health and well-being, especially for people with chronic conditions such as diabetes, obesity and heart disease.  

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Dental hygienists who are trained to organize workshops also participate in the Feel Good About Your Smile program.  OODH and UCEDD staff plan to recruit and train dental hygienists to increase capacity and maintain the program in Oregon.  Training sessions for hygienists are held during the Feel Good About Your Smile workshop for I/DD patients and their caregivers.  For more information, contact Jana Peterson-Besse at peterjan@.

Special Smiles is a Special Olympics Healthy Athletes® oral health program that offers athletes with developmental disabilities the opportunity to participate in dental checkups and take care of their oral health. 

According to the 2019 Special Olympics USA Healthy Athletes Special Smile report, in the Special Smile Oral Test of approximately 138,500 Special Olympics athletes from 2007 to 2019, approximately half of the athletes were unaware that they had underlying oral health problems. . Their data showed that nearly 50% of the athletes had signs of gingivitis, 25% had untreated cavities, 9% had a referral for emergency dental care, 12% had oral pain, and finally, 30% of the athletes in the Special Olympics – athletes were missing one or more teeth. .  (See the Special Olympics Special Smiles resource page for more information.)

Results from the 2018 Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System (BRFSS) study in Oregon showed that fewer adults with disabilities, just 59%, visited a dentist within a year compared to 71% of adults without disabilities. This means that disabled people do not have the same opportunities and benefits from annual dental care as non-disabled people.

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In this diagram, Orange bars represent adults with disabilities and blue bars represent adults with disabilities.  The BRFSS data in this chart show that Oregonians with disabilities (60%) reported having at least one permanent tooth removed, compared to 33% of adults without disabilities. (

)  In other words, twice as many disabled people have had one or more teeth removed than non-disabled people.  In addition, three times as many people with disabilities (30%) reported having at least six teeth removed compared to people without disabilities (9%).  Tooth extraction is one