Project launches to teach children how to brush their teeth in N Yorkshire schools
It follows concerns about the lack of NHS dentists in our area
A programme to teach children how to brush their teeth is about to launch at schools in North Yorkshire.
Dentist say they're concerned about the number of children who can't get an appointment - because so few practices are taking on NHS patients.
Mark Green is a dentist in Kirkbymoorside and says it's much needed:
"There's a school supervised toothbrushing programme that we're quite heavily involved in in North Yorkshire and we're trying to get that pilot out and running as quickly as possible. It's basically giving toothbrushes and toothpaste to schools for them to use because most dental disease is preventable. It just needs the right tools to do it and the right tools is just education and toothbrushes and toothpaste and with the going into the schools, the supervised toothbrushing programme, we think is a very valuable way of stopping the rot from getting worse into adulthood."
"It's technique, diet, advice. I mean, dietary advice is a main thing. If you are a snacker and a grazer, you're more likely to have problems because every time you eat anything, there's carbohydrates and it's not just sugars, it's just long chains of sugars. Your mouth will make acid, and if you have that frequently doused every couple of hours, your teeth are doused in acid, they start to get soft and holes start to appear."
"So if you can limit the slacking and the grazing to three meals a day and brush your teeth twice a day, you will not get tooth decay. It's only when you have a little bit here a little bit there and you know at Christmas time, birthday times when people get boxes of sweets, you better off being the whole lot. But that does less damage to your teeth than having one now, one half an hour later,
"People have got fillings already and we are not saying they're a lost cause, but you can't undo the fillings. What you can do is prevent those from becoming filled in the 1st place. So getting to the children, getting them educated just before their adult teeth come through and then you hopefully have got them for life".