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Having a positive approach to your general condition and maintaining a conscientious approach to a healthy lifestyle is the biggest step you can take towards ensuring you look after your teeth and gums.

Here are some lifestyle habits you can adopt in order to make sure you are doing as much as you can to protect your oral health:

Diet

Vary your diet. Ensure that the foods you eat are spread across all of the food groups, taking extra care not to overload on any on type. With specific relation to your teeth, make sure that your intake of foods with exceptionally high sugar levels are restricted to just meal times, and avoid excessive intake of fruit juices and carbonated fizzy drinks. The following foods contain levels of sugar that can cause harm to your teeth:

• Chocolate
• Sweets
• Cakes
• Biscuits
• Sponge-based puddings
• Sugar added to drinks such as tea or coffee
• Certain breakfast cereals
• Jam/Marmalade
• Honey
• Ice Cream
• Dried Fruit
• Syrups/Sauces
• Carbonated soft drinks/Fruit juices

Be very careful not to intake too many of these types of foods, and on a broader scale, make sure you when you do intake them, you do so as part of a healthy, balanced diet. One other disadvantage of eating or drinking too many of the products listed above is the fact that they can often be of very high calorie content, which if over-consumed over a period of time can lead to weight gain and other complications.

Smoking

Smoking is know to have a dulling, discolouring effect on the teeth which is difficult to counteract. Aside from causing bad breath, smoking also puts you at risk of gum disease. Aside from your oral health, smoking can also lead to very serious issues, such as problems with breathing and lung cancer. Statistically, regular smokers are much more likely to develop lung cancer than those who do not.

Alcohol

While it may not be widely-known, drinking of alcoholic beverages has been proven to be a major contributor towards tooth decay. It erodes the enamel which protects your teeth, and can lead to having to have dental treatment. Also, a large number of people who have been found to suffer mouth cancer admit to have been drinking alcohol regularly.