The Seventh Day Adventist Dental Clinic continues to promote dental hygiene, with presentations on how to maintain healthy teeth and gums at various schools.<\/p>\n
Lori DeMaine, who conducts the presentations, visited Garapan Elementary School yesterday, explaining that providing dental and oral education to the public plays an important role in promoting health within the community.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe feel that getting information out to the community, particularly on dental and oral health education, is very important, especially with children,\u201d she said. \u201cIf the child has toothache, he or she cannot concentrate in school.\u201d<\/p>\n
About 75 percent of children in America between 4 and 12 years old have at least one cavity. <\/p>\n
DeMaine said prevention\u2014through the education of children on dental hygiene and health\u2014is the best way to prevent cavities and gum disease.<\/p>\n
\u201cPrevention is the number one key, so by coming to the schools and talking to them about how to brush their teeth, why they need to brush their teeth, what plaque is, what causes cavities\u2026then the children can start [at a younger age] brushing their teeth and not having as many cavities,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
Further, DeMaine said that, with the islands\u2019 high rate of diabetes, the importance of promoting dental hygiene is even more necessary.<\/p>\n
\u201cFor people who suffer from diabetes, their gums don\u2019t heal as fast. When they\u2019re not taking care of their teeth by removing the plaque on a daily basis, their mouth becomes like an open sore or an open wound that does not heal. So it\u2019s very important for people to make that connection\u2014that a healthy gum means a healthy person. <\/p>\n
She said studies have also tied cardiovascular disease to gum disease caused by plaque. <\/p>\n
\u201cThe theory is that the blood supply\u2014the same one that goes to your gums\u2014also goes to your kidneys lungs, and heart, and can carry bacteria from your gums to your heart and everywhere else to cause an infection,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
DeMaine visits schools every other Wednesday. She said during visits, SDA provides free toothbrushes, stickers, and free dental exams for students. The school presentations started in Sept. 2002. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The Seventh Day Adventist Dental Clinic continues to promote dental hygiene, with presentations on how to maintain healthy teeth and gums at various schools.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-84602","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-local-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/84602","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=84602"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/84602\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=84602"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=84602"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=84602"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}