Your Healthy Mouth Book 1

By Martin Ashley

A healthy mouth.
No more bleeding gums. No more toothache. No more bad breath. No more worrying about dental treatment. A mouth you can enjoy and rely upon, at every stage of your life. wouldn’t that be great?

As one of the UK's leading dentists, Martin Ashley has successfully guided thousands of people on the pathway to a healthy mouth.
in Your Healthy Mouth, he shares this knowledge with you.

For twenty years, Martin has trained dentists and hygienists to help their own patients have a healthy mouth.
Your Healthy Mouth is written for real people like you. Martin explains dental problems in a way that you can understand. There is advice for everyone, at every stage of life. Parents of young children, teenagers starting to look after their own mouths, adults looking for a dentist and then those of us who act as carers for friends and relatives.

Your Healthy Mouth is conveniently separated into five books.
in book 1, Martin takes us on a tour of a mouth, explains the links between a healthy mouth and good general health, tells us about healthy diets and then describes gum diseases and tooth decay. All the background knowledge you need if you want a healthy mouth.

A healthy mouth for life.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Martin Ashley
• Release date: Sep 16, 2013
• ISBN: 9781301056774

Martin Ashley

Martin is a dentist in Manchester, UK.He works at the University Dental Hospital of Manchester as a Consultant in Restorative Dentistry and at his specialist dental practice, in Altrincham, Cheshire.

Book preview

DENTISTRY ISN’T WORKING FOR EVERYONE AND SO YOU AND I ARE GOING TO DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT.

I’ve been a dentist for a long time and looked after thousands of people just like you. For most of these, as well as doing lots of check-ups, I’ve drilled cavities, put in fillings, fitted crowns, bridges and veneers, implants and dentures. I’ve taken teeth out, saved dead teeth with root canal treatment and made ugly teeth beautiful again. I’ve also spent lots and lots of time treating gum disease.

Over the years, I’ve read countless books and attended numerous courses all about treating dental diseases. But there are hardly any books or courses for patients, aimed at teaching you about your mouth and helping you to prevent these problems in the first place.

When people come to my clinic for treatment, I always try to give them simple ideas about how they can make their mouth healthier, by what they do in the bathroom and what they eat.

These books are my way of passing this advice onto you. This is simple, common sense stuff, not really scientific or academic. You can understand your mouth better. You can have a healthier mouth. You can have a mouth that you can rely upon. You can have teeth for life.

There have been some fantastic improvements in dentistry in the last fifty years. However, it’s obvious to me that there is still more tooth decay and gum disease in our mouths than our dentists can deal with. It’s also pretty clear that most of us don’t clean our teeth well enough to stop these problems from starting. Most people only brush their teeth until their mouths tastes nice and fresh and certainly for less than two minutes. Unless they have been taught how to clean properly, most only remove about 40% of the plaque from their teeth and gums.

I’ve only met a few people who say they don’t brush their teeth at all. As you can imagine, their mouths weren’t pleasant to look into and certainly weren’t healthy.

Most people only brush their teeth until their mouth tastes nice and fresh and certainly for less than two minutes.

I know I’m one of the lucky ones when it comes to a healthy mouth. I was always taken regularly to the dentist when I was younger and had a fairly sensible diet so I didn’t get much tooth decay. I had four small fillings when I was a teenager. Even though I wasn’t really taught how to brush my teeth and I never used dental floss until I was an adult, I’m sure I picked up a few habits from my parents when they were cleaning my teeth as a child.

Whilst I was learning to be a dentist, I taught myself how to look after my teeth well enough so that I wouldn’t need much treatment myself – and it’s worked. Other than a kick in the mouth during a football game, leaving me needing two crowns and a root canal treatment, I’ve managed with one small filling and a few polishes in the last twenty five years. Lucky me.

Or maybe it’s not just luck. Because I speak to so many people and ask them about the way they look after their mouths, I now understand a lot about why some people get decayed teeth and bleeding gums and why other people don’t. As I learnt these things and passed the advice onto other people who came to see me, there started to be obvious changes in the way they look after themselves. Gums stop bleeding. Teeth stop decaying. Bad breath isn’t a problem any more.

So when my friend Paul called me to tell me about his bleeding gums, I knew I could help him. What I needed to do was teach Paul some simple things so that he could keep his own mouth healthier. I won’t be there to clean his teeth for him every day and he may need some treatment to repair the damage from not looking after himself well enough. Paul needed to take a personal responsibility so that he could have a healthier mouth.

Let me share some facts with you.

About half of the adults in the UK don’t have their own dentist.

For those adults who ARE registered with a dentist:

There are very few who have not had tooth decay and do not have gum disease.

About one in five adults don’t brush their teeth twice or more each day.

About half don’t use mouthwash at all and only one in five use it every day.

About one in three adults smoke and of these, two out of three smoke ten or more cigarettes each day.

About one in three adults don’t use anything to clean in between their teeth at all and only one in twenty do it every day.

Almost all tooth decay and gum disease in adults, happen in between the teeth.

I’m going to say that again, because it’s so important.

Tooth decay and gum disease happen in between the teeth.

These facts are important to me because they give me some idea of the problems that face us all. They tell me that most people either have or are at risk of developing tooth decay and gum disease.

It is really unusual for me to see a person who is very good at looking after their mouth. Many of the people I see in my clinics already have a dentist and have been referred to me to sort out a specific problem. So I think that people, who don’t have a dentist, are probably worse at looking after their mouths than these other people that I am fortunate to meet every day.

I know that having a good dentist isn’t the only thing that matters, because tooth decay and gum disease are beaten in the bathroom. Many people are just like Paul and aren’t naturally very good at dental hygiene, so I’ve learned that any advice has to be simple, step-by-step, easy to understand and easier to do.

Tooth decay and gum disease are beaten in the bathroom.

This advice has helped thousands of people already and these books will be useful for almost everybody who reads them. We are all a bit different from each other (and our mouths certainly are), so some things in this series of short books may not be useful for everyone.

It would be wonderful if everyone could have a dentist and dental hygienist of their own and develop a long and trusting relationship with them. This hasn’t happened for many people yet and it seems pretty unlikely that it ever will. Whether you have a dentist or not, don’t give up. A cleaner mouth is a healthier mouth.

No more bleeding gums. No more toothache. No more bad breath. No more worrying about dental treatment. A mouth you can enjoy and rely upon, at every stage of your life. Wouldn’t that be great?

In China, 20th September has been designated as national ‘Love Teeth Day’, since 1989. For more than twenty years, this day has seen a series of national promotional events, to teach the Chinese people how to look after their mouth, what to eat and drink and many other key dental health messages.