More and more emphasis is being placed on fitness for the elderly these days. And why not? People are living longer and longer, and have no wish to sit around waiting for the end. People want to look and feel good as long as they can. The same passions that push people to keep their bodies healthy make them conscientious about their teeth. There's nothing more attractive than a sparkling, white smile, there's nothing more basically desirable as clean breath and the ability to eat whatever one wants. Considering this, let's look at some ways in which we can keep our teeth healthy into old age.
1.    Maintaining a sparkling smile even when you are older means-taking care of your teeth when you are younger. If you want to greet the sunset with a sparkling smile, make sure that you make those teeth sparkle in the morning, in other words. This is just a general tip for everyone. It's better to avoid problems than to deal with them once they've arrived. Brush, floss, rinse with mouthwash, avoid sugary foods, etc.-and do these things from a young age. Doing these things from a young age will ensure a sparkling smile in old age.
2.    OK, the next obvious step to maintaining a sparkling smile even when you're older is-keep up with the basics! That is, brush and floss and rinse with mouthwash, and do these things multiple times throughout the day. Now, as people age their bodies change, obviously, and sometimes require different medications and so forth from those they used when they were young. Perhaps the teeth get more sensitive, for example, thus requiring special toothpaste. Perhaps the gums are tenderer, thus requiring a softer brush. But in general an older person can successfully use the same tooth care products enjoyed by the young. Keeping that in mind, be sure to successfully use them. That is, be sure to do research about the latest products, buy what seems best for you, and follow their instructions carefully and often.
3.    Maintaining a sparkling smile when you're older means-seeing a dentist regularly. As you age you'll be seeing your doctor more regularly, and you should schedule in visits to your dentist as well. Your dentist can advise you on any changes your teeth and gums might be experiencing as a result of advancing age. Your dentist can give you professional, safe advice on maintaining that white smile as your hair turns the same color. Regular visits to the dentists are an important way for the elderly to keep the sparkling smiles of their youth.
4.    Maintaining a sparkling smile when you're older also means that you may have to make some sacrifices. You may want to consider cutting sugar even more dramatically from your diet, and by sugar I mean those sweets and candies that tend to rot the teeth quite quickly. And the same applies for soft drinks. Carbonation wreaks havoc on one's teeth. It eats them away, it chips at them, it weakens them, it makes them brittle. If you're getting along in years and want to maintain your sparkling smile, be sure to include your diet in your considerations. Try to avoid the substances that lead to or speed up tooth decay.
5.    Take your calcium! Be sure to get plenty of calcium if you want to keep your sparkling smile while aging. Vitamin supplements are a good way to do this, and you should also confer with your doctor on the matter. Calcium is a crucial element in maintaining healthy bones and white, strong teeth. Make sure that your body gets plenty of calcium; otherwise your bones and teeth will start sharing theirs with other parts of your body, and the result will be weakened bones and teeth, and a less sparkling smile.

Does diet affect dental health? Sure it does. Why shouldn't it? Doesn't diet affect your physical health generally? It's funny, though, that people don't often think of "diet" and "dental health" as being related. They think of diet and heart health, diet and muscle health, diet and bone health, diet and skin health, diet and hair health, diet and fingernail health, etc. and so on and so forth, but diet and dental health floats through their minds, if it does so at all, much more infrequently.
    I guess it's because our teeth seem independent of us in a way. Our teeth don't seem embedded in us the same way our bones and organs do. Our teeth occupy the unusual position of being both out and in as it were. Our hair, our skin, these things are visible-flowing and shining or not, they're there, every time we look in a mirror, glance down at our arms and hands, scratch our heads. Our organs, our bones, these things are invisible-they're down there in the dark, where everything's mysterious and kind of gross and it takes twenty years of school to begin to make sense of it. Maybe it's this either out or either in quality that allows us to think of diet and hair health and diet and heart health more readily than diet and dental health. Teeth are both out and in. They're weird, all right, be we see them often enough that they also seem old hat. And there's nothing quite like them, they're these things, you grind up food with them and hopefully dazzle people with them when you smile.
    Whatever the reason, we all need to start thinking of diet and dental health more often. Our teeth are as crucial to us as our bones and organs, and certainly as our hair. Baldness you get used to, but having to disgustingly gum your bread and milk takes a little more time.
    Let's first consider the obvious. What are the things we eat that damage our teeth? What part of our diet is dangerous to our dental health? Too much caffeine, for example, can harm the heart; what do we eat and drink "too much of" regarding our teeth?
    Sugar comes to mind. Candy and sweets, ice cream and cake, these are obvious villains. What about sugary gum? Certainly. What about-soda pop? Most definitely. Soda pop, aside from the sugar, is carbonated, and carbonation wears away at your teeth relentlessly. We've been told from the beginning that too many sweets would result in cavities, gum disease, tooth decay, rot. What, then, are we doing to act on these warnings? Some dentists advise that you sit down and make a list of your diet during a typical day. Be brutally honest: detail your breakfast, your lunch, your dinner, your snacks in-between. You don't have to show anyone else your list, so be sure to include your most sugary secrets, that is, those things you enjoy purely in private and that no one else is aware of. Put a little red mark beside those things that are especially constructed to harm your teeth. Now comes the hard part-try, on a weekly basis, to get rid of a significant amount of those red marks. Do that, and you'll also get rid of a significant amount of risk to your teeth.
    Finally, consider your calcium intake. Your body has enormous amounts of calcium, and needs enormous amounts of calcium, but ironically calcium is the one mineral that one people are the most lax about consuming. Your teeth and bones need calcium to remain strong and muscular and effective. If keep it from them, though, they don't cling all the more stubbornly to what they have; no, they start farming it out to the other parts of your body that are shouting for it. The more calcium they unselfishly share, the more trouble you're in, tooth-wise and bone-wise. You need strong teeth, you need strong jaws, you need strong bones, and that means you need calcium.
    There are quite a few good vitamin and mineral pills on the market these days, and that's one very easy and affordable way to get the calcium you need. Cut your sugar intake and increase your calcium intake and you'll have taken two big steps down the road to dental health.

Gum disease! Ick. We've all seen those pictures-what is that? Is that ground beef? Is that a heavy, bloody chunk o' roast beef that teeth got mixed up in somehow? No, unfortunately, it's not. It's a pair of human gums in the worst stages of gum disease.
    But even the initial stages of gum disease are quite horrid and irritating. Even slightly swollen gums can drive you up the wall. They itch, they're unattractively dark and red, you're constantly licking them, poking at them, scratching at them-it's awful. Gum disease is awful, whatever the stage.
    But let's talk about the awfulness of gum disease just a little further. Gum disease affects the whole face. Gum disease affects the whole face in the sense that it's a very ugly affliction, and it also affects the whole face in the sense that it's a very painful one. When your mouth hurts, you do. People who've suffered from mouth troubles testify to untold agonies. They say that they're in pain all the time, and they can't forget it no matter how they try. With other types of pain you can try to drown yourself in pleasure, but given the fact that so much pleasure comes to us via the mouth, mouth pain means there's almost no escape.
    Gum disease can give you horrible breath. Oh, you can't imagine the levels your breath is capable of sinking to, your breath can go right into the abyss. Clean breath is one of those thing you take for granted until it's gone, but when it's gone you miss it as much as you'd miss air should it disappear all at once. That's a good analogy, in fact, because a faceful of bad breath generally hampers or cripples altogether a person's ability to breathe. You don't want bad breath, you don't want to see your friends and lovers recoil from you as if from a corpse bloating in the sun. Gum disease can make your teeth fall out. Oh yes, it can do that. Gushy, mushy gums are not a stable home for the ol' teeth.
    Now that we've (briefly, oh so briefly) discussed one or two of the horrors of gum disease, let's discuss how gum disease can be prevented. Gum disease, unlike cancer or other types of serious disease, can be prevented by the faithful, daily performance of a few simple tasks. We all know what those tasks are. We've heard them since practically the moment we slithered from the womb. Probably our future dentist was there in the delivery room, solemnly intoning his advice as we screamed bloody murder upside down in the air while getting our bums whacked. And good for him if he was! Our dentist knew how important this stuff is. And our mothers did. But we never seemed to pay sufficient attention to their words, at least if our habits today are any judge. But it's never too late to change. Let's start preventing gum disease-right now!
    More and more dentists will tell you that the chief and supreme way of avoiding gum disease is flossing. Try an experiment for me. Take a piece of chicken and lay it on a shelf in the sun for days. Better yet, lay it in a warm, moist place and see how long it takes to rot. You can bet that chicken stuck between your teeth is rotting even faster. Which takes us right back to bad-literally rotten-breath, but, more importantly, we've got to consider the effect of that rotting meat on our gums. Rotting meat in your mouth will, in time, turn your mouth into rotting meat. We've got to consider what that swarming bacteria is doing to our gums. We can probably take a good guess at what those nasty things are doing, and thus the need for religious flossing, morning, noon, and night.
    And actually brushing your teeth morning, noon, and night is a great soldier in the war against gum disease as well. Take some time with your tooth brush, brush for at least five minutes. And rinse with a good, strong mouthwash afterwards!
    Consider it-we're talking, on the whole, about fifteen minutes' worth of mouth work every day. Fifteen minutes. It doesn't seem too much to ask if you think about those pictures of ground beef long enough.