Healthy Holiday Choices FOODS FOR HAPPY TEETH
Among your favorite Thanksgiving treats are a few foods that not only taste good but are also healthy for your teeth. If you’ve volunteered to bring a side dish to a family Thanksgiving meal or are planning on cooking the whole meal yourself, make sure to include these foods. The Main Course: Turkey There are a lot of nutrients in the foods we eat that help make our teeth stronger, including protein. Luckily, the main course of a traditional Thanksgiving meal is full of it! Protein — when combined with vitamin D and calcium — helps keep our teeth strong, which reduces tooth loss and allows us to chew and talk properly. So enjoy your turkey and know that in addition to being delicious, it’s also improving your smile. The Side Dish: Cranberries Cranberry sauce is a key side dish for Thanksgiving, and it’s also exactly what your smile needs. Cranberries are full of nutrients
your body needs to be healthy, including potassium, beta carotene, vitamin A, and vitamin C, just to name a few. However, that’s not all cranberries can do for your teeth. The tart berry’s juice actually has a tendency to reduce plaque in the mouth thanks to proanthocyanidins (a class of nutrients), which prevent bacteria from sticking together. By simply enjoying cranberries with your Thanksgiving meal, you’re fighting harmful bacteria that could damage your teeth. The Dessert: Pumpkin Pie Unlike other Thanksgiving favorites like apple pie or pecan pie, pumpkin pie tends to have less sugar and far more nutrients, including vitamin A and calcium. Vitamin A is especially important, as it’s an essential part of strengthening the enamel on our teeth. When eaten in moderation, pumpkin pie can be both a sweet treat and an oral health booster. These are only three of the foods that can help your teeth this Thanksgiving. Before you roll up your sleeves and get started on your feast, check out a few more healthy recipes by visiting FoodNetwork.com or Delish.com.
Let’s Talk Thermal Expansion Tanks
A thermal expansion tank is part of your home’s pressure regulating system, and without it, your home’s fixtures can become damaged and cease to function properly. As water flows into your home, it passes through a pressure reducing valve (PRV) that brings the street pressure down to a manageable level for residential fixtures. But then, something else happens: Some of the water in your system gets heated, and when water gets hot, it also expands. So, every time your water heater fires up, it’s actually adding pressure to the entire house. Thermal expansion tanks were created to solve this problem. The tank itself is a small, usually 2-gallon, canister that should be installed near the water heater. They’ve been required by GA code since 2001, so if you don’t have one, you should get one installed. Inside the tank is a pocket for water, a rubber diaphragm, and a pocket of pressurized air. As the water heats up and increases in volume, the extra water ends up in the front end of the expansion tank as the air in the back end gets compressed further. When you run water from any fixture, that air pressure pushes the water back out until it again reaches equilibrium, thus keeping your water pressure constant throughout the heating cycle. Just like any other part, an expansion tank will eventually go bad and stop functioning. They have a life expectancy of 3–5 years depending on your overall pressure and hot water
use. Fortunately, they’re inexpensive to replace, and you can check yours yourself! Just look at the back end (the one away from the water line) and you’ll see a valve identical to the air valve on any tire — it may have a rather large plastic cap on it, but you can take that off by hand without doing any damage.
Simply press on the stem as if you were letting air out of a tire; if air hisses out, the tank is good. If the diaphragm inside has ruptured, you’ll either get nothing or a bit of water when you press it.
That’s all you need to know about your expansion tank! If you check yours and it’s gone bad, or if your home doesn’t have one installed, just give us a call or book an appointment on our website. That’s just Plumb Smart.
–Sam Little
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www.BePlumbSmart.com
404.427.0302
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