Most people have their teeth cleaned two or three times a year. However, if either of the scenarios below rings a bell, you might need to avail of this dental service a lot more frequently.

You need to include a lot of sugar in your diet

Dentists often tell their patients to keep their sugar intake as low as possible, as when a person consumes lots of sugar, this food can feed the bacteria that cause tartar. When this occurs, the person's dentist then has to remove this tartar, to stop it from causing dental decay and inflammation. This is done during a teeth-cleaning appointment.

Even though this is excellent advice, not everyone is able to follow it. For example, if you are a marathoner or ultra-marathoner, you might need to consume candy when taking part in running events, in order to fuel your body. Similarly, if you're a type 1 diabetic, you might eat candy several times a week, to counteract the dangerous and unpleasant effects that can occur when your body's blood glucose levels fall too low.

In either situation, tartar will form on your teeth faster than it does on the teeth of those that regulate their sugar intake. As such, if do not want your teeth to rot or your gums to become diseased, you will have to use your dentist's teeth cleaning services more often than other people.

You have taken up smoking and cannot stop

If you have taken up smoking and are now addicted to it, or if you rely on it as a source of stress relief, then you might not want or feel able to quit. Whilst your dentist will undoubtedly advise you to try to stop, you might feel that quitting is simply not an option at the moment.

If this is the case, then you will have to avail of the dental clinic's teeth cleaning services a lot more frequently than you may have done in the past. Going for frequent teeth cleaning appointments will help to remove some (although perhaps not all) of the staining the nicotine and tar will cause.

Whilst this will have aesthetic benefits and will stop the accretion of too much tartar, it's important to remember that even very frequent teeth cleaning appointments will not prevent a lot of the other forms of oral damage that smoking will inflict on your mouth. Smoking may, for example, make you more prone to gum disease and increase the severity of this condition if you get it. Given this, you should start seeking out the support you need (in the form of smoking cessation medication, self-help books, or a hypnotherapist) so that when you do feel ready to quit, you'll have the help you need to succeed.