27 Oct
by Derrick Vander Waal
SIOUX CENTER, IOWA – Your kids will come home with piles of candy after Halloween trick-or-treating on Saturday.
SIOUX CENTER, IOWA – Your kids will come home with piles of candy after Halloween trick-or-treating on Saturday.
You want them to enjoy their stash and eat at least some of the candy, but you also worry about those frightful sugar bugs haunting their teeth.
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| Promise Community Health Center’s dental staff, Lupe Tapia, Dr. Kenneth Tjeerdsma, Rebecca Hooyer and Nikki Fischer, share their tips for how you can manage your children’s Halloween candy stash. |
The dental staff at Promise Community Health Center shared some of their candy tips for you to consider this Halloween:
- Eat candy in one sitting. It may give your kids a sugar rush if they eat all that they want at one time, but it’s better for their teeth. Eating candy throughout the day constantly bathes the teeth in sugar. Also, it lowers the pH of the mouth all day, making it easier to get cavities.
- Eat candy at meal times. The meal acts as a buffer.
- Rinse your teeth with water or brush your teeth after eating the candy.
- Eat candy that dissolves easily. Candy like pixie sticks and chocolate is better for your teeth than hard candy that you suck on for long periods of time or the worst type of candy: chewy, sticky candy like caramels or gummies. The chewy, sticky candy are high in sugar and spend a long period of time stuck to the teeth and are more difficult for your body to break down.
Finally, the dental staff gives this suggestion: Remember the rule of twos! Brush your teeth at least two times per day for two minutes and visit the dentist two times per year.
By following these tips, your children’s Halloween exploits might not be such a horror show for their teeth after all.
Trick or treat?
Promise Community Health Center, headquartered in Sioux Center, is the only Federally Qualified Health Center in the far northwest corner of Iowa. Promise provides medical, dental, prenatal and behavioral health services. To learn more, visit www.promisechc.org.
