Hello everybody! Welcome back to my blog. The purpose of this blog is to help people find their way to a healthier lifestyle. I mostly talk about exercise and its science, which is my area of expertise, but I also talk about nutrition, sleeping habits and many other subjects related to wellbeing and healthy lifestyle. 

Last weekend my husband Harry and I went away to celebrate our first anniversary as men and wife, so I decided to make this week’s post a bit shorter. I want to share with you a health lesson I have learnt this week!

Those who have been following me for a while know already how much I encourage people to avoid focusing on just one aspect of their health and to see all the health professionals they need. As we see a GP when we have a bad headache, we should see a PT to train properly, a nutritionist o dietitian to learn how to eat, a physio if we have any muscular pain, and so on. There is one professional many people are scared of, if not for the pain they cause sometimes, for the hole they leave in our pocket! I’m talking about dentists.

A few months ago (more like a year or so) I started getting a little bit of pain in one of my molar teeth, the kind of pain that comes and goes, and that completely goes away for weeks with a paracetamol tablet. Back then, my focus was on saving money for my visa, our wedding, then my studies in Nutrition, and I kept holding on and postponing the inevitable moment of going to the dentist. Dentists are expensive, that’s no secret. But trust me, it can get even more expensive.

Finally, I went to the dentist, I got a check up, a clean up, and they found a couple of cavities which they fixed. But there was one fill-in that was too close to the nerve. The doctor told me that it might need root canal therapy in the future. At that moment I was like ‘okay, future Sanchi will take care of that, but for now I am done!’. Future Sanchi came no longer than a month later. My tooth was in the worst pain you can imagine. Have you ever gotten a wisdom tooth removed? The aftermath is pretty bad, isn’t it? Well, this pain was even worse. I am not going to enter into too much detail, but I basically spent a couple of weeks taking anti-inflammatories and pain killers, which caused other issues in my stomach and applying ice on the area constantly. I paid my dentist a visit again, and he said I needed root canal therapy. This therapy in Australia costs six times more than a normal fill-in, plus you need to get a crown which costs almost a couple of grand.

Of course I asked him for a bit of time to find a more affordable price, but everywhere is pretty much the same. I did find a place in which they’d do it cheaper, but the doctor didn’t know if she’d do a good job. I ended up going back to my original dentist with a lot of pain and very scared of what I had learnt about root canal therapy and its implications.

Now, I am not a dentist so I am not going to give you a masterclass on what this therapy consists on, but basically the procedure is to open the tooth, get rid of the nerve, put some medicine to stop the infection that is causing the pain, and fill up the tooth again. Sounds pretty nasty.

It turns out, the intervention is completely painless and the recovery is way easier than the recovery from a wisdom tooth removal. I had a lot of pain on the day while I was brushing my teeth and I had to have one painkiller before going to sleep, but other than that it’s totally fine.

Root canal therapy is not the only issue you may end up having if you don’t look after your teeth. If you don’t brush your teeth daily, floss at least once per day, follow a proper diet, and visit your dentist a couple of times per year, you can end up suffering from toothache, gum disease, cavities, a cracked tooth, sensitivity, just to mention a few. Some people are naturally more prone to suffer from some of these issues, especially those who enjoy eating sugary foods.

I have learnt this lesson the hard way. Investing in your health is not a waste and it’ll help you safe money in the long term. Dental health is an important part of your health. Not only will it make you have a nice smile, it’ll stop other issues (some diseases in our teeth can cause major problems in our jaw and throat as well) and it’ll avoid that toothache which can get to be unbearable. Furthermore, gum disease is heavily correlated with cardiovascular disease as bacterial infections can enter the bloodstream and cause damage all over the body. Unfortunately, it is more common than you’d think with 47% of adults suffering from some type of periodontal disease.

I encourage you to make an appointment with your dentist if you’re not on top of it already, get a nice cleaning, and if you need any fill-in, get them done before it’s too late! If the money is an issue, try to use a budget and spread out the payments. I will share a post about keeping a healthy budget in the next couple of weeks.

That’s it for today! I really hope that you enjoy this post! If you like what I do and you want to support this project, follow me on Instagram and Facebook, like the post and comment! Thank you!