Dental Talk Thursday | Burning Mouth Syndrome

Thursday, December 29, 2016

 

Dental Talk Thursday | Burning Mouth Syndrome

 

 

For this weeks Dental Talk Thursday we are going to be talking about Burning Mouth Syndrome.

 

An uncomfortable burning sensation in the mouth is more common than you may think.

 

The burning can be associated with several disorders when present in combination with other symptoms. Conversely, up to 15% of elderly patients may experience a burning mouth sensation without having other visible symptoms.

 

There is not any visible evidence of the condition, but some symptoms can include:

• Long-lasting burning sensation on tongue, roof of the mouth or lips
• Dry mouth
• Tingling sensation causing discomfort
• Altered smell and/or taste

There are several possible contributors to burning mouth syndrome such as emotional stress, anxiety, depression, hormonal deficiencies in post-menopausal women and neurological abnormalities.

Because there is no visible evidence, you may be wondering how it is diagnosed. It’s typically diagnosed by elimination the other factors that may cause burning such as medications, type 2 diabetes, allergies and vitamin deficiencies.

 

Here’s what to do for treatment:

 

Eliminate any contributing factors such as infections, oral products and spicy foods. Make sure to use only alcohol-free products with low additives and minimal flavoring. Stress management therapies like yoga and moderate exercise can also help reduce the pain.

It may not seem like a big deal but it can be debilitating so make sure to visit your dental team as soon as possible.

 

 

 

- Rachel Faul, Registered Dental Hygienist

 

*Stay tuned for next weeks "Dental Talk Thursday" over at Facebook.com/RachelFaulFitness at 7:30pm EST

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Dental Talk Thursday | How Cavities Are Formed

Friday, December 23, 2016

Dental Talk Thursday | How Cavities Are Formed

For this week’s Dental Talk Thursday we are going to be talking about the single most common chronic childhood disease - cavities.

Shocking, right!? Well let me just shock you a little bit more.

Although dental cavities are highly preventable, the CDC reports that, “they remain the MOST common chronic disease of children aged 6 to 11 years and adolescents aged 12 to 19 years.” They also have reported that, “tooth decay is FOUR times more common than asthma among adolescents aged 14 to 17 years.”

A cavity is the breakdown of the hard tissues of a tooth. This breakdown aka demineralization, is initiated by acids created by the bacteria found in plaque. Even though enamel is the hardest substance in the body, it causes some serious damage and can lead to the formation of cavities that will need to be filled. Delaying treatment for too long will destroy the tooth. Just another one of the MANY reasons not to miss your 6 month check-ups! ;)

 

So, what’s the decay process like? A tooth goes through four stages to develop decay:

First Stage: First, a white or brown spot appears on the tooth's surface.

 

Second Stage: Then, once the bacteria continue to multiply, the decay breaks through the tooth's hard outer enamel layer.

 

Third Stage: Now, since the cavity has gone through the enamel to the softer layer of the tooth, it is able to destroy the tooth structure more rapidly because the layers of tooth beneath the enamel are about 50% thinner.

 

Fourth Stage: At this point the bacteria should be removed and the cavity should be filled already. However, if the cavity is not filled, it will cause even bigger problems down the road as the bacteria continue to progress through the tooth’s structure.

 

If you have tooth decay, please see your dentist as soon as possible to get it taken care of. It may seem like a minor thing at the moment but in time it’s only going to cost you more pain, time, money, and possibly even your chances of saving the tooth.

 

Here are just a few of the many things you can do to help prevent your from getting cavities:

• Avoid foods and drinks high in sugar.
• Watch your frequency over quantity. For example: If you’re going to eat a bag of M&M’s eat them all in one sitting, preferably with a meal rather than sporadically throughout the day. Each time you consume an M&M you are not only introducing your mouth to more sugar but you are also creating a more acidic environment in your mouth (aka cavity heaven).

• Use a soft toothpaste and mouthwash that contain fluoride.
• Brush your teeth at least twice a day for a minimum of two minutes each time to remove plaque. Make sure to always use a fluoride tooth paste. Also, make sure that your mouth wash contains fluoride too; fluoride strengthens tooth enamel to help prevent cavities.

• Floss daily to remove plaque between teeth.
• Yes, I’m sure your hygienist asks you about flossing at every appointment and you probably roll your eyes. It’s okay, I’m not offended, I see it every day. What we want you to know though is that we don’t ask you about it to be annoying, we ask you because we truly do care. If you’re skipping out on the flossing just know that you are leaving 35% perfect of your tooth surfaces dirty. Think of it this way. Not flossing is the equivalent to wiping your butt cheeks but skipping the crack. Pretty gross, right?!

• Talk to your dentist about your medical conditions and medications.
• There are so many medications and medical conditions out there that reduce your salvia flow. Having a reduced saliva flow increases your risk for tooth decay because the teeth are not getting the natural cleansing effect of the saliva.

 

-Rachel Faul, Registered Dental Hygienist

*Stay tuned for next weeks "Dental Talk Thursday" over at Facebook.com/RachelFaulFitness at 7:30pm EST

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Story Time Sunday | "My first job!"

Monday, December 19, 2016

Story Time Sunday | "My first job!"

 

 

For this weeks Story Time Sunday I am going to talk about a first we (mostly) all have - a first job!

 

 

Now if you've ever heard me say, "dentistry is all I've ever known" - I'm not lying.

 

My first job was in a dental office. This ^ is literally the exact photo I took on my first day of work :)

 

I can remember every time I went to the dentist for my 6 month check up I would talk to my doctor about hiring me someday. I started bringing it up when I was a teenager, I'm guessing around 15.

 

I've had the same dentist for the vast majority of my life and teeth are just something I've always been interested in.

 

I knew I wanted to do something health related from an early age because I love helping people. I debated nursing. I strongly debated nutrition. After all, I decided on dentistry.

 

I was pretty sure that I wanted to be a Dental Hygienist but as with any job you can never be sure until you actually do it. I didn't want to go ahead and spend all that time and money on a career I wasn't going to like.

 

I remember seeing my dentist a few months before my 18th birthday and he told me I had to be 18 to work there.

 

Well, on my 18th birthday I started my first day on the job.

 

I was hired as a dental office assistant which is something I didn't have to go to school to do but was something I knew would give me enough insight into dentistry to help me make sure going to school for hygiene was what I really wanted to do.

 

I did a lot of different things around the office. I helped up at the front desk pulling and filing charts. I seated patients, prepared and tore down treatment rooms, and helped them schedule their next appointment. I developed and mounted the x-rays for the two hygienists at the office. I assisted the doctor with fillings and extractions and did the sterilization and preparation of the instruments for the whole office staff.

 

I was a senior in high school so I would go to school in the morning for 3 classes and then I would leave and work for the rest of the day.

 

I loved working at the office and it helped me finalize my decision to go to college for dental hygiene. :)

 

 

I want to know: What was your first job?

 

*Stay tuned for next weeks Story Time Sunday at 7:30 pm EST over at Facebook.com/RachelFaulFitness

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Self-Awareness Saturday | Developing Awareness (Part 5) | Learn Your Emotional Triggers

 

Self-Awareness Saturday | Developing Awareness (Part 5) | Learn Your Emotional Triggers

Last week I went over the fourth step, seek out honest feedback, so this week I'm going to over step five: learn your emotional triggers. 

If you missed last week, click HERE to catch up and read it!

People with a high sense of self-awareness can identify their emotions right as they are happening. If you don't have a higher sense of self-awareness its easy to repress your emotions and even deny their causes.

 
 

"The strengths that have helped you to succeed are also your greatest emotional triggers when you feel someone is not honoring what makes you special."
 

When your brain recognizes that someone has taken or plans to take one of these important things away from you, your emotions get triggered.

What’s your reaction? Its fear or anger and you rationalize with yourself as to why it makes sense to feel that way. Maybe you lose trust, maybe you lose courage and maybe you react in such a way that it actually could negatively impact your relationships in the future.

The crucial thing you have to do is -- catch yourself reacting when your emotions are triggered. Once you are able to do this, then you can determine if the threat is legit or not.

Need some examples to get your gears turning?

Here are some pretty common ones:

Need for acceptance

Need for attention

Need for balance

Need for comfort

Need for consistency

Need for freedom

Need for fun

Need for love

Need for order

Need for predictability

Need for respect

Need for safety

Need to feel included

Need to be in control

Need to be liked

Need to be needed

Need to be right

Need to be treated fairly

Need to be understood

Need to be valued

Some of these needs will be important to you but others won’t hold any emotional trigger for you.

When something emotionally triggers you, you react because you feel as though you aren’t getting or will not get one of these things that are so important to you.

If you want to start controlling your own emotional triggers here’s a good place to start. Skim back through that list and find the three that most frequently set off your emotions when you don’t get those needs met. Be honest.

Let me just say for any of you wondering while reading this, no those needs are not “bad.” There’s nothing to feel ashamed of. If you want an answer, here you go. The reason you have these needs is because at some point in your life, the need SERVED you.

What I mean by that, for example, is let’s say that your life’s experiences have taught you that success occurs when you are able to maintain control, establish the right environment, and surround yourself with those who appreciate you for being that way.

Conversely, the more you become devoted to these needs, the more your brain will be searching for situations that threaten your ability to have these needs met. This is when your needs become emotional triggers.

If you don’t consciously acknowledge the need that is triggering your emotional reaction, you will become enslaved to the need. However, if you are honest with yourself about your needs, —that we had expected people to treat us in a particular way and had hoped our lives would go as planned—then we can begin to see life more objectively.

 

So what do you do when you’re in the middle of being emotionally triggered?

You shift your emotional state in order to think through what your trigger is.

Practice these 4 steps:

First, relax; take a deep breath to release the tension in your body. Then, detach from the situation, clear your mind of all thoughts. Then, drop your awareness to the center of your body just below your navel. Feel yourself breathing. Finally, focus your mind and choose one word to describe what emotion you want to have or who you want to be in this moment.

It may sound crazy, I get it - BUT developing awareness is all about the mindset.

 

 

 

 

*Stay tuned for my next "Self-Awareness Saturday" at 7:30pm EST over at Facebook.com/RachelFaulFitness for part 6

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Motivational Mindset Monday | Believe You Can and You Will

 

Motivational Mindset Monday | Believe You Can and You Will

Something I hear people say all the time is something along the lines of, "Oh gosh I could never do that!", "They just got lucky!", etc.

 

When there's something we really want in life we tend to shoot it down because it seems so far out of reach. It seems TOO far out of reach, so much so that we tell ourselves that its unattainable.

 

Why do we do that? Where's our confidence?

 

How many mornings is it going to take for you to wake up and realize you may not have tomorrow!? We have no idea how long we are going to have to achieve it so why waste your time now? Why keep telling yourself you'll start next Monday or next year?!

 

The sooner you start the sooner you'll be closer to achieving your goal.

 

I know I've talked a lot about positive self-talk before but trust me guys, it does make a HUGE difference!

 

If you can look in the mirror an say to yourself, " I AM going to do this. I AM going to do whatever it takes. I AM going to make the sacrifices. I WILL make it happen!" and you actually DO that, guess what - I bet you'll be successful in meeting your goal.

 

BUT if you do what most people do and just constantly shoot it down and tell yourself that you CAN'T do it, than guess what - you sure as hell won't be able to do it EVEN IF you try because you have NO vision. You have NO belief in yourself. You have ZERO confidence in your abilities.

 

You don't have to be a master or a pro or the "best" at anything in order to achieve your goal. At the end of the day, you just honestly have to want it bad enough and BELIEVE that you can do it.

 

Trust yourself, give yourself some credit, it's a scary thing to jump out on a limb. BUT in my eyes, I would much rather be hanging on the limb than sitting back wishing my whole life I would've just done it.

 

Even if no one else believes in you or believe in what you're doing - that doesn't matter. What matter is if YOU believe it!

 

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💕My challenge for you is to go. for. it. - starting today!💕

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*Stay tuned for next weeks "Motivational Mindset Monday" here and over at Facebook.com/RachelFaulFitness at 7:30pm EST

 
 

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Dental Talk Thursday | The Little Known Dangers of Gum Disease

Thursday, December 15, 2016

Motivational Mindset Monday | Our Biggest Poison is Regret

Monday, December 12, 2016

 

Motivational Mindset Monday | Our Biggest Poison is Regret

 

 

 

We walk around like we have forever to do the things we want to do. How often do you actually stop to pay attention to what is around you, take it all in, smell the roses and just feel the wind on your face?

 

We have one life to live. We have one life to fit in everything we want to do. We have one life to get everything done. The thing is, we don't know when our end point is going to come.

 

Stop putting things off. Stop saying tomorrow. Stop waiting for the right moment because it may never come, you may never get another chance. If you want something you have to do it NOW.

 

Find your passion, do what makes you happy. I don't care if it's health and fitness like me, it can be beauty, or skin care, or animals, or the elderly or I don't know whatever it is - just FIND IT and DO IT. Use it as your vehicle, put your blinders on and don't let your foot off the gas.

 

For so long I questioned my decisions, I questioned my career choice. I'm the type of person who always questions everything because I'm so damn afraid to make a mistake.

 

I was afraid to fail, I was afraid of what people thought of me, I was afraid of the outcome. Taking a risk is not something I do, I live life on safe side. BUT I couldn't get over this pit in my stomach telling me to do something more, to do something different.

 

I put it off for so long, I didn't want to hear it, I was afraid of change. It took me a lot longer than I want to admit to get me to the point where I just had to be honest with myself and realize that I was my problem, I was the one holding myself back. I was the one that needed to change and that's exactly what I did.

 

Now you can sit here and tell me how bad it is or how much you don't agree or why you can't do it yourself but it's just not true. If anyone has ever done it, than so can you.

 

Stop telling yourself you're not good enough or that you can't do something you want because you can, you just have to want it  b a d  enough.

 

I learned the hard way that all you have to do it make one person happy - yourself, and once you do that, THEN you can worry about making everyone else happy.

 

Ask yourself if you're doing the things you need to do to put yourself in the position you want to be in or are you just wasting time? This applies to every aspect of life.

 

 

Find your passion.

Do what makes YOU happy.

 

 

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💕My challenge for you is to sit down with yourself tonight, grab a pen and paper and do some real soul searching.💕

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*Stay tuned for next weeks "Motivational Mindset Monday" here and over at Facebook.com/RachelFaulFitness at 7:30pm EST

 
 

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Story Time Sunday | "Having a Small Bowel Follow Through!"

Sunday, December 11, 2016

Story Time Sunday | "Having a Small Bowel Follow Through!"

For this weeks Story Time Sunday I am going to talk about something I had done that's probably TMI - a Small Bowel Follow Through!


What could possibly sound more appetizing than starting your day out by drinking two cups of barium and ending it with a shot of magnesium? Sounds like a great time right?

Yeah, well that's how my Thursday went this week.

I realize this is probably not a topic many people feel comfortable talking about but if you know me, you know that I am very open about bodily functions lol.

First of all, for those of you who don't know I have some health issues, nothing serious, but the main area I have issues with is digestion.

I have Irritable Bowel Syndrome, I've had it since I was 15, it's super common and there is no cure for it. I see a gastroenterologist for it and I also take measures to help lessen the symptoms such as avoiding certain foods and drinking, eating smaller meals, eating slower, taking peppermint oil, and drinking my Shakeology. All of these are things my doctor is on board with and for the most part I rarely have issues with it thanks to that.

My doctor did want me to have the full testing's done though just to rule out anything else. Aside from some blood work, she ordered me a Barium Swallow aka a Small Bowel Follow Through.

"A Small Bowel Follow Through is an x-ray exam of your stomach and the upper section of the small intestine. To be able to see these structures on an x-ray they must be outlined with barium. Barium is a liquid that is swallowed and appears white on a x-ray picture."

You cannot eat or drink anything after midnight the night before the test. When I wake up in the morning the first thing I think about is food so this sucked for me. It's literally like "Okay I'm awake, feed me now!" haha!

Before you start the x-rays you have to drink two cups of barium which looks like cottage cheese and milk mixed together. I actually thought it was Elmer's glue at first. I didn't think it'd be that bad so I took a big chug and it honestly didn't taste that bad, it tasted like a flat grape soda. Not the greatest but definitely bearable. The part that I thought was the worst was the consistency. I'm a texture person, the only thing I ever drink is water, sometimes milk. This barium was SO thick, like really thick which made it super hard to get down.

I did pretty good at first but the more I drank the more it started to make me gag. I got through it through and I drank both of the cups in like 15-20 minutes.

So then I had to go hangout in the waiting room and they came and brought me back for an x-ray every 15 minutes to track the barium. This lasted for like 2 hours and then it was every 30 minutes that they would bring me back. Finally once it was near the end of my digestive track they brought me back to see a doctor for some final x-rays which lasted maybe a minute.

I was there for 4 hours total. I guess it depends on the person though as to exactly how long it will take.

Afterwards I just felt really gross. I felt like I smelt like the barium, I felt nauseous, and I was not hungry at all even though it had been like 17 hours since I had eaten or drank any other liquids.

They gave me a cup of Milk of Magnesium to take home and drink after dinner to get the rest of the barium out of my system. Make sure you take it when you know you're going to be home for awhile because it's a laxative.


Overall it's not the worst thing in the world, you just have to be prepared to be there for a few hours and be prepared to take the laxative afterwards.


SIDE NOTE: Having health issues is one of the biggest reasons why I got into living a healthier lifestyle and started this business in the first place. If I can prevent anything else from happening by making healthier choices with whole foods and getting in daily exercise than why not do what doctors have recommended us to do since forever? I don't believe in quick fixes and all the junk you may see blasted all over social media - I believe in a lifestyle change. I know I'm not the only one with digestion issues so if I can help someone in any way through my business or my stories, than it's all worth it. <3

I want to know: Have you ever had one of these done? What was your experience like?

 

*Stay tuned for next weeks Story Time Sunday at 7:30 pm EST over at Facebook.com/RachelFaulFitness

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