HOW SPORTS DRINKS CAUSE CAVITIES IS YOUR FAVORITE WORKOUT BEVERAGE DOING MORE HARM THAN GOOD?
Thanksgiving is an excellent time to teach children about gratefulness. By planning some fun, gratitude-themed games, you can impart a valuable lesson and spend some quality family time together. Get your kids in the holiday spirit by adding a Thanksgiving twist to these classic games. PICTIONARY Want to bring out your kids’ creative sides? Pictionary is the perfect way to encourage artistic expression and grateful thinking. Try adding a rule where players have to draw something they’re grateful for. This will get your kids thinking beyond turkey and stuffing and give them an imaginative way to express their gratitude. Plus, who doesn’t love a good art contest? GUESS WHO? To play gratitude-themed Guess Who?, have each participant write down their name and something they’re thankful for on a slip of paper and put it in a bowl. Then, at the dinner table, have each person draw a random slip and read what it says without saying the name while everyone else tries to guess who wrote it. While Pictionary may get your kids talking about what they are thankful for, Guess Who? will tune them into what others around them are thankful for, too. PICK-UP STICKS Like regular pick-up sticks, the goal is to remove a stick from a haphazard pile without disturbing the others. However, by using colored sticks that represent different kinds of thankfulness — such as places, people, or food — you can make players think outside the box. This will ensure you get a wide range of creative, thoughtful answers whenever the kids pick up a stick. These modified games are great for helping your kids realize how much they have to be thankful for. Use these to spend some fun, educational, quality time with your family this Thanksgiving. ENGAGE YOUR KIDS ON THANKSGIVING WITH THESE GRATITUDE-THEMED GAMES
Nothing pairs better with this crisp fall weather than a weekend spent watching one of the best displays of strength and competition known to mankind: Yes, we’re talking about football! Whether you’re watching your kids or grandkids run underneath those bright Friday night lights or indulging in some tasty barbecue during halftime of an epic Bengals game, you can understand why football has become the most-watched sport in the U.S. With the popularization of football, you’ve likely noticed that sports drinks are consumed more as well. The original sports drink was born when researchers were looking for solutions for athletes falling ill after intense exercise in the heat. Sports drinks replace crucial electrolytes and carbohydrates while hydrating at the same time. While these tasty liquids fixed one problem, they exacerbated another: cavities. Here at Anderson Dental Care, we see athletes of all ages who are in excellent physical shape but have a mouthful of cavities due to sugary sports drinks, gels, and energy bars. Here’s how it happens. When you work out, you breathe harder, which reduces the amount of saliva in your mouth. Saliva has a neutral pH and helps neutralize the acids in your mouth, helping to protect your teeth from bacteria. Whenever you work out and drink a sugary, acidic sports drink or eat an energy bar, your saliva isn’t there to help neutralize the acids and protect your teeth, so enamel damage is the result. While athletes’ mouths suffer from the damage caused by sports drinks, kids are the ones who are affected the most. Many parents think these drinks are a great alternative to soda, but, in all actuality, they lead to just as many problems. If you have kids or grandkids playing sports this fall, encourage them to limit their intake of sports drinks, drink from a container that keeps the liquid away from their teeth, rinse their mouth with water afterward, and wait at least an hour to brush their teeth when finished. If you stay active in or out of the gym, be sure to practice these tips yourself, and, if you have any further questions, feel free to give our office a call!
Read more about sports drinks and teeth on our blog: www.atowndental.com/blog
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