TIPisode Small Change, Big Impact

This week on A Tale of Two Hygienists TIPisode we are joined by Andrea Wiseman, RDH to talk about Children’s Dental Health Month and the importance of starting good oral hygiene habits young.

“If you have a patient that has white spot lesions it will be much harder, if not impossible to remineralize those white spots.”

“Small change, big impact.”

“The higher strength fluoride toothpaste is more effective at preventing decay.”

“Even after being instructed how to apply a pea sized amount, patients and parents over apply.”

“HealthWarehouse will ensure your patients receive a 6 month supply at about half the price of brick and mortar pharmacies.”

Elevate Oral Care Website: http://www.elevateoralcare.com

Elevate Oral Care Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/elevateoralcare

Elevate Oral Care Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/elevate_oral_care/

More TIPisodes: https://www.ataleoftwohygienists.com/tipisodes/

AToTH Website: https://www.ataleoftwohygienists.com

This TIPisode has been Transcribed for your viewing pleasure:

Michelle Strange: A Tale of Two Hygienists presents this week’s TIPisode: quick and easy tips to keep you up to date and presented by the experts in the profession. Now, get ready for your unofficial TIPisode, this week brought to you by Elevate Oral Care.

Andrea Wiseman: Hello, everyone. It’s Andrea Wiseman with Elevate Oral Care with February’s TIPisode. As a hygienist, we are front and center in shaping our patient’s health, the most important with our young patients who are starting their path to a lifetime of good oral hygiene. We focus our time with them to provide oral hygiene instructions, proper brushing and flossing techniques, diet tips, and any other tidbits we can provide. 

February is Children’s Dental Health Month and a time for us to remember how important it is to start our pediatric patients on the right foot for good oral hygiene. This means thinking about things that our patients don’t think about or don’t know to think about. Things like proper fluoride use and monitoring fluoride ingenstions are factors many patients and parents don’t fully understand. 

Also, the various types of toothpaste available can have a dramatic impact on oral health. For example, tartar control toothpaste slows or stops mineralization process of plaque to calculus. However, this mineralization process is the same process that mineralizes our teeth. So, if you have a patient that has white spot lesions using a tartar control toothpaste, it will be much harder if not impossible to remineralize those white spots. On the other hand, if the patient has no white spots and they use tartar control toothpaste, they will maintain their health and get much less calculus build up. Small change, big impact. 

Those are the types of things we try to build into our products here at Elevate Oral Care. Your hygiene appointments are busy, so closely monitoring the sources of fluoride a patient ingests can be challenging. It’s not just fluoride supplements and fluoridated water at their home. It requires attention to bottled water intake; juices; tea, which is naturally high in fluoride; foods; and many other ingested items that can contain fluoride. For your high-risk patients, this is even more important than when you place them on a prescription strength 5000 parts per million fluoride toothpaste. 

It is well document [sic] that the higher strength fluoride toothpaste is more effective at preventing decay than a lower strength 1000 parts per million fluoride paste that are available from over the counter. However, young patients might ingest toothpaste, which should be controlled if it occurs on a daily basis. A regular tube of prescription toothpaste can be easily squeezed, and too much paste can be dispensed and ingested. A metered-dose option of toothpaste is better suited for young patients. That is why Elevate Oral Care released three flavors of the only metered-dose 5000 parts per million fluoride prescription paste. One pump delivers a pea-sized dose, which is approximately .25 grams just as the American Academy of Pediatric recommends for children 3 years of age and older. 

Even adults should use this much toothpaste regardless of the strength. A study completed at the University of Washington demonstrated that even after being instructed how to dispense a pea-sized dose of toothpaste, patients and parents over apply. Adding Just Right 5000 prescription toothpaste to your preventive tools in your practice is proven to help reduce high-risk patients decay rates and mineralize existing white spots. 

If your office doesn’t dispense products to patients for at-home use, no problem. We’ve teamed up with HealthWarehouse to offer first and easy delivery of Just Right 5000 and FluoriMax 5000 prescription toothpaste to ensure your patients get the products they need.

Simply fill out the prescription form and fax it to the HealthWarehouse, and they will take care of the rest including contacting the patient for payment, shipping information, and following up for refills. HealthWarehouse will ensure your patient gets a six-month supply of toothpaste at about half the price of brick-and-mortar pharmacies.

To learn more about how you can help improve your patients preventive habits in Children Dental Health Month [sic] and every other day of the year, reach out to Elevate Oral Care. We can provide in-office or web-based live CE programs and bring your whole office team to a new level of care. 

Visit elevateoralcare.com for more information. 

 Michelle Strange: Thanks for listening to another TIPisode, and thank you to Elevate Oral Care for sponsoring this week’s episode. You can find out more about their great products at elevateoralcare.com. 

And don’t forget to hit the “subscribe” button in your podcast app, follow us on Facebook or Instagram, and head over to our website, ataleoftwohygienists.com, to sign up for our newsletter. We always appreciate ratings and reviews. Thanks for listening to your unofficial dental hygiene podcast. 

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