Dental anxiety is a big reason why people aren’t getting the proper dental treatment these days.
Oral hygiene is an extremely important part of life, not just for your oral health, but for your overall health as well. Your oral microbiome has a massive effect on things like your gut, your autoimmune system, and your mental health. Seeing a dentist on a regular basis can keep your teeth healthy and your oral microbiome balanced.
In this post, we’re going to give you some tips for managing dental anxiety so that you can get the proper care. Read on and you’ll see that regular trips to the dentist can save you a lot of trouble down the road.
Tell Your Dentist About Your Dental Anxiety
Dental anxiety can crop up in many ways, whether it’s sweating or rising blood pressure, so it’s important to be able to recognize when it’s happening and communicate with your dental staff. These people see new patients all the time, so you can bet that they’ve had to deal with dental anxiety before.
If you just try to get through the appointment on your own, the chances of dental anxiety affecting your ability to seek regular care will go down. But if you tell your dentist and they can help you through it, your dental anxiety may disappear altogether.
Doing What Works for You
If you really want to get past your dental anxiety, then you should do your best to get to know it. Recognize signs of your anxiety rising up, what it feels like, and specifically what is causing it. Usually, extreme dental anxiety comes from fear of pain, needles, and a lack of control in dentistry situations.
You should also try to learn more about dental procedures to demystify what’s going on when the dentist is working on you. The more you know about dentistry, the better you’ll be able to decode what your dentist is telling you when they say they’re performing specific procedures.
This knowledge will allow you to accept or reject certain procedures that you’re not comfortable with. For instance, knowing more about the overdenture process can help you decide which type of dentures you want to get.
Meditation and Distractions
For some, no amount of personal research or bedside manner from their dentist can actually quell anxious feelings. You still need to get your dental work done in order to maintain your oral health, so performing specific exercises in order to stay calm and distract yourself can be quite helpful.
Mindfulness meditation is a great way to alter your focus from what’s going on inside your mouth to the breath and other parts of your body. Body scans and breathwork are proven techniques that people have been using for thousands of years to maintain composure in stressful situations.
You can also take the opposite approach and try to distract your mind with stress balls, headphones, or visualizations that take you anywhere but the dentist chair.
Beat Dental Anxiety Today
Now that you know a bit about dental anxiety management, you can start to get the care that your teeth and mouth need. Stress and anxiety can hamper you from doing many things in life, but your oral hygiene is important, so use these tips to beat your dental anxiety and keep your mouth as healthy as can be.
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