Spiritual Wellness
"Your teeth are as white as sheep that are freshly washed. Your smile is flawless..." (Song of Solomon 6:6, NLT).
Even in Old Testament times, a brilliant smile was desirable. Within the romance of the Song of Solomon, for example, the young man wooing the young woman complimented her, "Your teeth are as white as sheep that are freshly washed. Your smile is flawless..." (Song of Solomon 6:6, NLT). While maintaining white teeth may not exactly be a biblical directive, it is certainly an attractive feature.?
Teeth whitening is one of the most popular elective dental treatments around. While bleaching and polishing treatments are workable ways to a brighter smile, these aren't procedures that you can get done every week. To keep a freshly cleaned appearance between whitening procedures you may need to stay away from foods that can stain your teeth.
Do you like the soy sauce in your Chinese take-out?
While sauces give your favorite foods a great deal of their flavor, many deeply colored sauces are powerful tooth stainers. Their piquant flavor comes from their acid content. When you expose your teeth to such acidic foods on a regular basis, you wear your enamel away and give the color a chance to stain the layer underneath. Cream sauces usually do not have much staining power - it's the deeply colored ones that do. If you love your sauces too much to give them up, you should consider brushing your teeth right after each meal.
What could be wrong with tea?
Tea has an inviolable position on any list of healthy beverages. Dentists, though, often advise their patients to be careful about their tea habit if they wish to see the results of their teeth whitening procedures last. Recent studies have found that even light herbal teas are able to take a layer of your enamel off and cause some staining.
Have you ever tried washing a wine stain off a white tablecloth?
To help their patients decide on which foods and drinks have the most tooth staining potential, dentists often tell them to try a white tablecloth test. If you believe that a food or beverage stain can be easy to get out of a white tablecloth, you can be reasonably certain that it's safe.
Red wine has a powerful ability to stain teeth. Not only is it an acidic beverage that can attack your enamel, it contains powerful staining pigments called chromogens, too. If you have a regular wine habit, even brushing your teeth right after your wine may not be enough.
What goes for wine goes for the fruits that wine is made from, too. If you like nothing better than to settle back with a bunch of warm, purple grapes, you could easily come away with a smile that is a bit darker. Grapes aren't the only staining fruit, either. Most brightly colored fruits and berries - blackberries and cherries among them - have the power to stain teeth.
Synthetic drinks are no better
Whichever artificial drink you like - soda, energy drinks or sports drinks - they are deeply acidic products that can actually stain your tongue. Their ability to stain your teeth is a given. Sodas are especially harmful to the integrity of your enamel. Some studies show that the acid content in sodas is so high that it can attack your enamel as powerfully as battery acid. Once the acid does its work, the artificial food coloring used in these beverages goes deep into your teeth.
So are you supposed to drink nothing but water?
It cannot make sense to cut out every food and beverage just because it has staining potential. It would not even be healthy. What you can do, instead, is to make changes to the way you consume these foods and drinks.
Try moderation: Fruits like blackberries and blueberries are excellent sources of antioxidants. You should not consider cutting these fruits out of your diet. Instead, you can simply eat them in moderation. To make up for the loss of antioxidants in your diet, you can try replacing these staining fruits with others like apples and melon.
You do not have to drink directly out of a glass: Using a straw on drinks that stain your teeth can be an idea. This idea can easily work with sports drinks and sodas. It might be a stretch with wine or tea. Nevertheless, it's a practical idea.
Finally, whenever you eat or drink something that has the ability to stain, make a point to the brush as soon as you can.
Spiritual Prayer
After Jesus said this, he looked toward heaven and prayed:
“Father, the hour has come. Glorify your Son, that your Son may glorify you. For you granted him authority over all people that he might give eternal life to all those you have given him. Now this is eternal life: that they know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent. I have brought you glory on earth by finishing the work you gave me to do. And now, Father, glorify me in your presence with the glory I had with you before the world began. “I have revealed you to those whom you gave me out of the world. They were yours; you gave them to me and they have obeyed your word. Now they know that everything you have given me comes from you. For I gave them the words you gave me and they accepted them. They knew with certainty that I came from you, and they believed that you sent me. I pray for them. I am not praying for the world, but for those you have given me, for they are yours. All I have is yours, and all you have is mine. And glory has come to me through them. I will remain in the world no longer, but they are still in the world, and I am coming to you. Holy Father, protect them by the power of your name, the name you gave me, so that they may be one as we are one. While I was with them, I protected them and kept them safe by that name you gave me. None has been lost except the one doomed to destruction so that Scripture would be fulfilled. “I am coming to you now, but I say these things while I am still in the world, so that they may have the full measure of my joy within them. I have given them your word and the world has hated them, for they are not of the world any more than I am of the world. My prayer is not that you take them out of the world but that you protect them from the evil one. They are not of the world, even as I am not of it. Sanctify them by the truth; your word is truth. As you sent me into the world, I have sent them into the world. For them I sanctify myself, that they too may be truly sanctified.“My prayer is not for them alone. I pray also for those who will believe in me through their message, that all of them may be one, Father, just as you are in me and I am in you. May they also be in us so that the world may believe that you have sent me. I have given them the glory that you gave me, that they may be one as we are one—I in them and you in me—so that they may be brought to complete unity. Then the world will know that you sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me. “Father, I want those you have given me to be with me where I am, and to see my glory, the glory you have given me because you loved me before the creation of the world. “Righteous Father, though the world does not know you, I know you, and they know that you have sent me. I have made you known to them, and will continue to make you known in order that the love you have for me may be in them and that I myself may be in them.”