I used to dread Halloween.
As a dentist, it felt like an evening devoted to every little thing I used to be attempting to guard my sufferers from.
Buckets of sweet. Soda. Sticky caramel. Acid baths for enamel. It’s a nightmare for any dentist!
However after practically forty years as a dentist—and a dad—I see it otherwise now.
Halloween isn’t the enemy. It’s a mirror.
It displays our society’s tradition of sweet worship—how we have fun, join, and educate our youngsters what traditions and holidays appear to be.
I’m not proposing that we swing to the opposite excessive—consider me, I perceive how lame it’s to cross out apples Halloween evening.
However there are methods to hitch in on the enjoyable with out passing down a tradition of sweet worship.
So I assumed I’d share a couple of of our household rituals.
Perhaps they’ll encourage a brand new one in yours.
1. It’s Not the Sugar. It’s the Frequency.
Each time you eat a chunk of sweet, your mouth turns acidic for about thirty minutes.
That’s how cavities kind—not from one piece of sweet, however from many small hits, when enamel don’t have a change to “re” mineralize once more after they “de” mineralize.
The repair is not to take sweet away. It’s to show restoration – spacing it out, rinsing with water, letting the mouth reset.
👉What I like to recommend: Provide water or xylitol gum alongside the sweet binge. When you possibly can, steer children towards sweet like Snickers over lollipops—a Snickers is gone in a couple of fast bites (and the nuts assist fulfill), whereas a lollipop retains the mouth bathed in sugar and acid for ten, generally twenty minutes. It’s how lengthy enamel are uncovered to sugar, not how a lot sugar.
2. The Trick No One Thinks About: Water
When my grandkids go trick-or-treating, every carries a water bottle.
Rinsing with water between candies resets the mouth’s pH. It protects enamel. It retains saliva flowing.
👉What I like to recommend: Earlier than we head out, we make this straightforward magnesium drink. It retains electrolytes balanced and replaces the magnesium your physique burns by means of processing sugar. Encourage them to sip it in between homes.
Magnesium is crucial as a result of it helps saliva—the mouth’s built-in restore system. Saliva neutralizes acid and brings minerals again into enamel. When magnesium runs low, saliva circulate slows, and your enamel keep acidic longer.
So water and magnesium collectively assist the mouth get well between treats. That’s the actual “trick.” The children don’t care about any of this, in fact. They only love attending to have yet one more deal with!
3. Learn how to get sweet out of the home the following day (with no battle)
At our home, we used to finish the evening with the Nice Pumpkin. After trick-or-treating, the youngsters would go away their sweet out in a single day.
Within the morning, they’d discover as a substitute a brief be aware from the Nice Pumpkin, thanking them for sharing their sweet with different children, alongside a toy that they’d been wanting (it’s like a second Christmas!)
4. Feed ‘em actual meals earlier than the frenzy
I used to prepare dinner the youngsters’ favourite meal earlier than we’d head out for trick-or-treating. What I used to be doing was loading them up with protein and fats earlier than they exit, getting them full and steadying their blood sugar.
5. Don’t flip sweet into forbidden fruit
If you get residence, speak, giggle, unwind. Don’t make the sweet an enormous deal. The extra power you give it, the extra energy it has.
Youngsters choose up on our nervousness. In the event that they sense that sweet is forbidden or harmful, it turns into one thing they crave much more. That’s once you begin discovering wrappers underneath the mattress.
Allow them to have their enjoyable that evening. Get pleasure from it with them. Then get the sweet out of the home and transfer on.
When sweet isn’t the focus, it loses its pull!
You don’t have to decide on between being the enjoyable grownup and the wholesome one.
You may be each!
Let’s de-center sweet this Halloween and deal with the actual deal with.
-Dr. B
P.S. What are your Halloween rituals? Do you might have your individual model of the Nice Pumpkin? I’d love to listen to the way you make the evening enjoyable in your loved ones. Reply and inform me.