Halloween is right around the corner! To avoid the negative effects that Halloween candy can have on your oral health, remember these quick tips:

Have a Plan for Fighting Cavity-Causing Bacteria

It can be difficult to manage the amount of candy that your child gets their hands on this time of year. Although some kids manage to collect hundreds of pieces of candy, you can monitor the amount of treats that your child brings home and keeps. It’s tempting to keep all the Halloween candy around for the kids (and ourselves), but your teeth will thank you if you limit the stash.

Here are three ways to keep your teeth healthy during Halloween:

1. Avoiding certain kinds of candy
2. Maintaining your oral health routine
3. Taking advantage of a local Halloween candy buyback program

How, you may ask? We’ve laid it all out here:

The Worst Candy for Your Teeth:

Sticky and Gummy Candies: Dentists hate these candies. They’re known for being terrible for your teeth. Sticky candies are hard to remove once stuck onto teeth, leaving them to create cavity-causing bacteria over time. Prevent your child from consuming sticky and gummy candies and remove this culprit from your kids’ candy haul. We’re looking at you, sour gummy worms.

Hard Candy: Hard candies affect your teeth in two ways. First, if we’re not careful, we can break our teeth when we bite down. Second, we often leave hard candy in our mouths for a longer period of time. This gives the sugar more time on our teeth.

The Best Candy for your Teeth:

Chocolate: When comparing chocolate to hard candy or gummies, chocolate is the best bet for your teeth. We’re not saying chocolate is good for your oral health, but it is better than the alternatives. Chocolate is one of the most popular candies handed out on Halloween. It’s easier to clean off our teeth than sticky candies because it melts away instead of sticking around.

Maintain Your Oral Health Routine: Halloween creates temptations that often disrupts our oral health routine. From staying out late to keeping candy around 24/7, it’s cavity-causing season. But if you keep your oral health in check, you can keep cavities away. Limit the number of treats per day and reinforce the need for good oral hygiene.

Check out these tips to maintain your oral health routine:

• Continue to brush your teeth twice a day.
• Clean between your teeth with floss.
• Stay away from sugary beverages.
• Drink more water.
• Maintain a healthy diet.

Halloween Candy Buyback:

Halloween Candy Buyback is a nonprofit organization with the goal of removing excess Halloween candy from kids while supporting the troops. Get rid of all that candy and make a difference while you’re doing it. Register to hold a buyback event or search for one near you on their website!

To learn more about what dentists give out at Halloween and get their best advice for keeping kids’ teeth healthy, visit www.trickytreats.org.

Look for Halloween treats that are healthy for your teeth? Click here!