Just a quick note to wish you all a pleasant and safe Halloween!

Research has shown that fibre is an extremely valuable suppliment to take on a regular basis. Here are some valuable fibre facts.

1. Fibre combats disease. In the intestine a high fibre diet helps the body to get rid of cholesterol as it binds with the cholesterol during digestion, helping it pass through the body without being absorbed. The bulking caused by fibre in the intestines helps prevent food from stagnating for periods of time thus helps to preventing colon cancer.

2. The bulking effect caused by fibre in the diet can also help with weight loss as the stomach feels fuller, and fibre isn’t digested. Fibre passes through the body without the body gaining any nutritional benefit.

3. Most fast foods have little fibre, therefore if you like fast food you should supplement your diet with fibre cereals were possible.

4. The best sources of fibre are whole grains and concentrated grain products.

5. Children should take fibre as well in their diets, from about the age of 2 onwards. Best bet for fibre with kids are cereals.

6. If you take fibre you need to drink more water as fibre absorbs water to bulk up. He recommended amount of water to take every day is 2 litres.

7. You can’t cook fibre out of foods.

8. Be careful you don’t ‘overdo’ on fibre, or you’ll be spending more time ’sitting down’ in the bathroom, (so maybe you should subscribe to an extra newspaper!)

In conclusion there are more benefits to be had by including fibre in your diet than not, so consider eating more fibre now while your health is in relatively good shape.

You’re never too old to learn, or so they say, and I learnt a valuable lesson a few days ago when I kept an appointment with the dentist.

You see I’ve missed a few appointments and it had been about a year and four months since I last been for a regular checkup. I do clean my teeth regularly each evening as most people do, but this visit to the dentist was for catch up descaling, which I should have kept up with last year.

Some time ago I bought an electric toothbrush, but it made my gums bleed, so I threw it out and instead bought a normal toothbrush of the type that dentists recommend, (only of soft bristles rather than hard).

For about a year also my gums had been bleeding slightly during cleaning, and on occasions my breath had not been the best, (probably due to the slight bleeding of my gums).

Now like most people I can come up with the usual information about cleaning your teeth, and like most people I knew all about how holes in your teeth were formed. No, I didn’t need any fillings on this visit, but the experience of having my teeth descaled was actually physically painful.

Well that’s not going to happen again, and you might as well learn from my experience to save yourself from the same thing happening to you.

As I said I thought I knew most of what takes place in your mouth, but I was wrong. It’s not trapped plaque that causes irritation to your gums, but trapped scale, (plaque which has attached to your teeth below the gum level and then hardened with a reaction from salt from your saliva).

This forms an extremely uneven surface preventing your gums from reattaching to the surface of your teeth, and instead they become irritated from the action of bacteria in food particles which work their way down between the gum and the teeth. The situation is compounded because normal cleaning cannot remove the hardened scale. This causes irritation to your gums and causes bleeding.

If plaque is missed during normal cleaning just under the gums surface, it doesn’t take long to turn to scale; a couple of days will do it. Once this happens you are into the cycle of progressive gum irritation and a risk of long term damage to the underlying bone in which your teeth are held.

If descaling is not done on a regular basis, then eventually the acid formed by bacteria breaking down the food particles, dissolves the underlying bone leading to loss of the bone and a parallel recession of the gums. You can see the effect of this in older generations, who have become ‘long in the tooth’ who have not had the advantage of modern dental care.

The hygienist who carried out the descaling for me explained all this in great detail and started to show me examples of toothbrushes you shouldn’t use because of varying bristle lengths and shapes.

Instead the hygienist recommended an electric toothbrush!

When I said I find that an electric toothbrush made my gums bleed, she explained why that was the case. What I had done was I had bought an electric toothbrush on an impulse and started using it.

Because I had not been to the dentist for descaling before purchasing the electric toothbrush, all I was doing was cleaning the surface of my teeth and powerfully aggravating the damaged gums from the underlying hardened scale making my gums bleed all the more.

If I had taken descaling treatment first, I would have found the electric oscillation of the toothbrush rotating head, would have got under the leading edge of my gums sweeping out plaque before it could form scale keeping my gums healthy.

The result of purchasing a new electric toothbrush and putting this advice into action has stopped my gums bleeding within two days, and the use of the disclosing mouthwash has shown no noticeable scale reforming.

Remember, it starts with a trip to the dentist to have your teeth descaled.

So there you have it. Learn from my lesson. Follow this advice and you will find a great improvement in your dental health and in the dental health of your family.