When and What Can You Eat after Fluoride Treatment?
Do you want to have an additional mechanism to fight bacteria in your mouth and protect your tooth enamel? If so, contacting any dental professional will give you access to information that fluoride is particularly helpful if you are at a high risk of developing cavities.
Having accepted the dentist’s recommendations and scheduled an appointment for fluoride treatment, you may wonder what you can expect during a professional fluoride treatment? How long will the therapy require and what you can or cannot eat after fluoride treatment? The questions will haunt you along with the costs for the procedure until you discuss the same with the dental professional in general dentistry that is offering fluoride treatment.
Read along to learn more about all the questions you have in mind about fluoride treatments.
What Can Be Expected During a Professional Fluoride Treatment?
Dentists provide professional fluoride treatments using a highly concentrated rinse, gel, foam, or varnish. The procedure is applied using a swab, brush, mouthwash, or tray.
If the dentist uses a tray for applying the fluoride, he or she will take dental impressions of your teeth to prepare a custom-fit tray specifically for your mouth. The professional treatments from dentists have more fluoride than what is available in toothpaste or tap water, and the application only requires a few minutes. You will be requested to avoid eating or drinking anything for 30 minutes after the treatment to ensure your teeth entirely absorb the fluoride.
Before going ahead with the treatment, you must give your entire health history to your dentist to help them choose the right treatment for you.
What You Can or Cannot Eat after Fluoride Treatment?
As mentioned earlier, you will be restricted from eating or drinking anything for 30 minutes after the fluoride treatment. Dentists are the experts in providing these treatments, and if they recommend that you wait for 30 minutes before having anything, they must have adequate reasons to do so.
There are many fluoride varnish brands available in the market, all of which are manufactured in the USA and sold over the counter to anyone who wants to use it. Every product has different limitations on what you can or cannot eat after an application of the treatment.
Professional fluoride treatments offered by general dentistry only require a few minutes for the application and restrict you from eating or drinking anything for 30 minutes after the application. The different brands available on the market have different stipulations, with some mandating 4 to 6 hours after the use and some demanding 30 minutes like professional fluoride treatments.
Perhaps the only common factor among all the brands available on the market is the requirement to stay away from hard foods, alcohol, soft foods, hot and cold drinks, et cetera. Some brands have even more restrictive instructions and require you to leave the application on the teeth for at least 24 hours while following the restrictions on what you can or cannot eat after the use. Under the circumstances, wouldn’t it be better for you to contact your general dentistry practitioner to have the fluoride treatment administered with proper information?
Costs of Fluoride Treatments
Dental insurance companies cover fluoride treatments for children, and therefore you will not have to pay anything if your child needs the procedure. However, if you, as an adult, require fluoride treatments, you may have to pay $ 10-$ 30 or more for the treatment. Therefore it would be helpful if you inquired with your dentist about the cost of the procedure beforehand.
The Benefits of Fluoride Treatments
Fluoride functions by restoring minerals to the surface of the tooth, which may have eroded because of attacks by bacteria. Fluoride can also prevent the growth of harmful oral bacteria from inhibiting the development of cavities.
Fluoride is incapable of removing the decay, but it can create a more robust outer surface for your teeth to prevent tooth decay from penetrating the deeper parts. Fluoride is beneficial both for children and adults, and the sooner children are exposed to fluoride, the likelihood of them developing cavities is reduced.
Fluoride is available in toothpaste as well as tap water and is providing many benefits that are needed by the human body. However, if you wish to have an additional layer of protection, there is no reason why you cannot get professional-grade fluoride treatments from general dentistry to have better control over cavities.