Brushing your teeth is the best preventive maintenance.

When a leading consumer advocacy publication polled its readers about their oral health habits — good and bad — it found that consistent brushing and flossing were among the factors that help maintain excellent oral health.

When nearly 52,000 readers of Consumer Reports weighed in on a variety of dental issues, the results also showed that those who regularly take care of their teeth and gums also tend to have dental insurance.

The magazine’s survey, published in the February issue, also found that, “few readers reported experiencing anything beyond mild pain–even for the infamous root canal.”

The survey also helped highlight the No. 1 reason why respondents delayed dental care–cost. Even those with dental insurance sometimes didn’t seek treatment if they had already used up the maximum coverage in their yearly insurance plan, or because insurance wouldn’t cover the procedure.

Like any health issue, few improve when they’re ignored. And the Consumer Reports survey also found another important side effect of putting off treatment, whether for fear of pain or cost:

Readers who delayed getting care were less satisfied with their dental work than those who got prompt care.

The magazine also compared the types of dental insurance and found that dental HMOs have “the most generous coverage and usually place no annual limit on the care your receive.”

Western Dental Services, Inc., one of the largest dental HMOs in California, and also operates in Arizona and Nevada, offers low-cost insurance plans, even to patients without perfect credit.

When candy consumption encourages tooth decay and poor nutrition, the cost of the candy can be far greater than it’s price, says Western Dental Chief Dental Director Dr.Louis Amendola, D.D.S.

“This generation of children encounters sugar in many more foods, and in great quantity, than ever before,” said Dr. Amendola. “It’s up to us, the parents and health providers, to help set a good example for children. So this year, try a new approach that moderates the amount your children eat.”

What’s a parent to do?

Option One: Select a few favorite treats to eat for a week; then throw the rest away.

Option Two: Buy it back. Price it by the pound, or assign a value to specific treats. Your children profit, particularly when they avoid the excess sugar exposure that can lead to weight gain and tooth decay.  A growing national movement, the Halloween Candy Buy Back program, helps businesses and individuals learn how to organize a buy-back program.

Option Three: Barter for it back. Tell your kids that you’ll allow them something special in exchange for turning in a portion of their candy. More points go toward the kinds of candy most likely to harm teeth — the chewy taffy, the sticky caramels, the slow-to-dissolve hard candies that provide a steady diet for the bacteria that cause tooth decay.

Option Four: Gather up candy from your kids and others in the neighborhood and donate it to the U.S. Military serving overseas through Operation Gratitude. Since 2003, Operation Gratitude has assembled donations for more than 660,000 “care packages” filled with snacks, entertainment items and even toothbrushes. Ask your local dentist for a few donations of oral care items, such as toothpaste, floss and toothbrushes. While no one wants to encourage tooth decay, a gift from home is especially sweet.

Choosing Halloween candy used to require a decision between plain or peanut. These days, you can’t just pick up a 10-pound bag of Snickers without considering how candy contributes to the rise of childhood obesity, poor nutrition and tooth decay.

If you’re looking for a trick-or-treat alternative that will set a better example for nutrition and good oral health, you’re not alone. Parents are all too aware that Halloween is only the beginning of a months-long candy season that begins with candy corn tucked in pockets and ends with marshmallow Peeps stuck to the backseat.

Yet Halloween can also become a good time to reexamine the price kids teeth pay for all of that “free” candy.  There are Halloween treats that won’t hurt teeth, says Dental Director Dr. Louis Amendola, D.D.S., of Western Dental Services, Inc.,  a dental HMO based in California.

“Try something that isn’t candy, such as Halloween-themed pencils, stickers or glow-in-the-dark bracelets,” says Dr. Amendola. “Party supply stores often have a good assortment of favors and trinkets that can be added to your trick-or-treat giveaways,” he said.

It’s hard to break with tradition, though. Instead of  becoming the neighborhood bad guy who bans all candy, Dr. Amendola suggested selecting edible treats that will cause the least harm, dentally speaking. He explained that tooth decay is the product of naturally occurring bacteria that digest sugars in the mouth and produce acid, which dissolves tooth enamel.

“The longer you expose your teeth to sugar, the more likely you are to experience damage,” he said. “The worst offenders are sticky candies that linger long after you eat them.” Dr. Amendola offers these additional trick-or-treating tips:

• Avoid giving away or keeping hard candies, taffy, bubble gum, lollipops and caramels.
• Offer sugarless gum, preferably with the natural sweetener xylitol, which stops the action of acid-producing mouth bacteria.
• Have your children bring bottles of water, which can quench thirst and rinse away sugar.
• Sort your children’s candy haul and throw away the most damaging treats.
• Set a limit on how many pieces of Halloween candy can be eaten each day, and when.

The start of a new school year is a perfect time to instill healthy habits. As parents and students alike adjust to new routines, it can be easy to overlook the importance of taking care of teeth. Here are some tips to help keep teeth and gums in top shape, throughout the school year and beyond.

• Pack a dental health kit in your child’s lunchbox or backpack.  Let your child select the toothbrush, whether it’s a battery-operated spin brush, a travel toothbrush or a favorite manual toothbrush. Don’t forget to include a tasty toothpaste, brush case and floss, says Dr. Louis Amendola, D.D.S., Chief Dental Director at Western Dental Services, Inc.
• If your children haven’t had a dental exam in the past six months, schedule one soon. According to the U.S. Surgeon General, children with dental pain may be irritable, withdrawn, or unable to concentrate. As a result, school performance and attendance may suffer.
• Send them to school with a reusable water bottle. Clean, fill and refrigerate it nightly so that it’s chilled in the morning. Having a ready supply of water helps rinse the mouth of cavity-causing bacteria and quenches thirst so that tempting sugary sodas and juices are easier to avoid.

Here’s our list, thanks to the insights from the experts at Western Dental Services, Inc. Can you suggest some tips, too?

• Create a brushing reminder, or a series of them. Attach a string or note to a doorknob, set a cell phone alert,  or  mark a calendar page to keep dental health top of mind.
• Make a pact that everyone, including the adults, can’t leave the house for activities — school, social or professional — unless they have already brushed their teeth.
• Associate homework with a healthy treat, such as sugar-free xylitol chewing gum. Though many schools ban any kind of  gum on campus (have you looked under a school desk lately), chewing gum can be a handy after-school snack that calms hunger and stimulates saliva flow.
• Allow your kids to have sugar-free chewing gum after meals.  According to a 2008 study published in The Journal of the American Dental Association, chewing sugar-free gum after meals resulted in a significant decrease in cavities, mostly because of the benefits of  increased saliva flow.
• Keep water and sugar-free gum or mints in the car, to keep mouths clean and happy during commutes to school or lessons.
• Educate your children about the importance of oral health. Let them know that every minute that they spend taking good care of their teeth now will reward them with strong, healthy, beautiful teeth for the rest of their life.

Even though whitening is a relatively simple type of beauty treatment, it’s still a quasi-medical procedure that, like hair dyeing, is becoming a popular at-home option.

The array of whitening products and procedures stretches from the drugstore, to the medical spa, shopping mall, cosmetics counter and finally, the dentist’s office. The do-it-yourself choices include gel-backed strips; whitening toothpaste, mouthwash and floss; brush-on whitening gel pens; and multi-product kits that contain mouthguard-like trays to contain the whitener.

One element is in common with all of them — hydrogen peroxide.  Professional  speed bleaching treatments achieve often-dramatic whitening in about an hour and use up to 35%  hydrogen peroxide, or 10 to 15% of a similar solution, carbamide peroxide. The differences? Time, cost and ease of use.

Only dentists can prescribe whitening gels that contain more than 6% hydrogen peroxide,  says Dr. Louis Amendola, D.D.S. and chief dental director for Western Dental Services, Inc., a California-based dental HMO.  Most at-home kits, whether they are whitening strips or one-size-fits-all trays, use less powerful bleaching agents that are designed to be used daily for a period of days or weeks to achieve gradual color change. If your daily coffee, tea, red wine and blueberry diet has made your smile dingy, then do-it-yourself whitening products may be handy for frequent touch-ups.

However, some of the most effective at-home kits may require twice-a-day, 30-minute treatments for three weeks, according to Consumer Reports.

If you want white teeth — now — then speed bleaching in a dentist’s office is the most likely choice. However, a dentist will insist on a pre-treatment examination to be sure you don’t have tooth decay or gum disease that could cause discomfort if sensitive nerves or tissues get exposed to the bleaching agents.

In the more casual days of child-rearing decades ago, it seemed wildly overprotective if a parent took a baby to see a dentist. Baby teeth, we were told, were practically disposable and generally unworthy of a dental exam. In the span of a generation, dental technology and practices have changed enough to warrant a new approach to children’s dental health.

Today, we’re learning to think not just about teeth and  childhood cavities, but about the broader idea of oral health and a lifetime of strong, undamaged teeth and gums.  Imagine a childhood free of that painful right of passage — filling cavities. It can be done, no Tiger Mom tactics required.

The Academy of Pediatric Dentistry tells us that proper dental care begins at birth. Yep, that cute little toothless infant needs a gum check. Twice a day, parents should clean infants’ gums with a small, soft-bristled brush or a soft cloth and water.  Getting them accustomed to having their mouths touched and wiped clean will keep that sweet baby breath sweet, and help babies grow into children and adults who treasure the look and feel of a clean mouth.

Even the seemingly simple stuff — like teeth whitening — seems to go better with a pro on hand for consultations. Yours truly should know.  My path to whiter teeth is littered with bleaching gel pens, whitening floss, toothpaste and mouthwash, and the worst, a “discounted” $75 take-home kit that contained syringes of high-powered whitening gel and DIY bleaching trays.

The so-called boil-and-bite bleaching trays are like big, rubbery mouthguards. The instructions said to drop a tray into hot or boiling water for a few seconds until it softens, then position it onto a row of teeth where it will cool and mold into place. Easy as pie, you have a custom-made tray.

Not quite.

My tray slipped from my tongs and stuck to itself. Fished from the hot water too late, the tray was misshapen — forever. Working more carefully with the second tray, I managed to get a less deformed end product. Both were such an uncomfortable, sloppy fit that the strong bleaching gel burned my gums, while the oversized dimensions nearly gagged me. My first and only gel-and-tray whitening session began and ended there.

I’m still a stubborn DIY type, so I’m going to give at-home teeth bleaching another go.

In the meantime, check out this article I found on teeth whitening on CNBC.com

• 6 — The recommended number of months between dental check ups.
• 5 — The number of surfaces to brush or floss on each tooth: front, back, the two sides, and the chewing surface.
• 4 — The number of quadrants in the mouth. Dentists assign the number 1 to the to the upper right (also known as the maxillary right); 2 = upper left; 3 = bottom (mandibular) left; 4 = lower right.
• 3 — The typical number of months that should elapse before replacing your toothbrush.
• 2 — The minimal number of times to brush your teeth each day, and the number of minutes to spend every time you brush.
• 1 — The age at which children should have their first dental checkup.
• 0 — The number of cavities you can expect to have if you carefully follow these steps.

The new digital X-ray technology allows for nearly instant feedback. In a blink, the image appears on the monitor, looking just like an X-ray, but better and brighter. The technician can capture virtually any angle inside your mouth (without gagging you). The software allows the techs to improve the X-ray’s contrast and brightness to spot any evidence of tooth decay, cracked or weakened fillings, gum disease, improper alignment, and in children, the progress and position of emerging permanent teeth.

Many dentists are positioning the computer monitors so that they can review the image with their patients. Sitting in the chair, you can’t help but be a little fascinated by the high-tech view of your fillings, gums, or even how that bicuspid that always feels misplaced is actually out of alignment.

Digital X-rays are “green;” that is, they require no darkroom space or chemicals to process the image. Better, digital X-rays also emit 80 to 90 percent less radiation than conventional dental X-rays. The Health Physics Society says that most digital dental X-rays have among the lowest radiation dose of any radiologic procedure in the healing arts. In other words, you get more radiation in an afternoon at the beach.

However, not every independent dentist has made the conversion, which can be prohibitively pricey. Some companies have committed to the state-of-the-art technology, such as Western Dental Services. The California-based dental HMO converted all of its 260-plus offices to digital. The company’s chief dental director, Dr. Louis Amendola, D.D.S., says patients appreciate the speed and safety of the new technology.

“The immediate feedback that’s now possible has helped our patients to become more involved in their own dental health,” Dr. Amendola said. The dentists like it, too, he said, because digital radiology gives dentists more diagnostic tools and multiple options for displaying, sharing and storing X-rays between computers and networks. Now patients don’t have to wait for an X-ray to arrive by mail or messenger if they need a second opinion or must transfer their records.

Digital X-rays make dental exams faster, safer and greener. And though the exposure to radiation is minimal, don’t be surprised if  most dentists still still cover you with the lead-filled apron and step outside the room. Old habits die hard.