New Year’s Resolutions Are Great If They Stick, Dental Plaque Isn’t; So Include Your Oral Health

The tail end of last year had us contemplate changes we should probably make, in order to live the best version of ourselves we’ve heard a lot about and likely haven’t quite found (yet). We’ve chewe over the highs, lows and mundane mediocrity of the hundreds of days we ploughed through, in what is technically termed a year; though often feels infinitely longer, or surprisingly shorter depending on our focus.
Whatever happened, the reality is that it’s now relegated to the past. Relived only in our mind – or at a table at the pub with anyone else who was there, or wished they were. Life’s weird like that; for the most part it becomes fantasy the second we’ve lived it.
Although we exist in the present, we’re often straddling the past and the future – mostly both of which we make up. Even memories aren’t infallible. Certainly actuality isn’t; considering the rampant technology being given free reign in this new era of nerd broligarchy. There’s vagary of it being referred to as a ‘golden age’ but like all good lyrics that implant as misheard ‘orange aid’ could have been said in a different context and equally applicable. Since truth seems to have been slipped a mickey on New Year’s Eve with its last known sighting unconscious in the back of a Cybertruck, it’s hard to tell.
All that makes sense at the moment is that it’s all rather befitting of a Mister Magoo evil twin episode.
Fifty years ago, songwriters Peter Allen and Carole Bayer Sager told us that everything old is new again, and that’s pretty much the whole New Year’s resolution thing. Not only do we often recycle the failed ones of the previous year (and maybe even the year before that) but it’s a ritual the Babylonians started 4,000 years ago.
If one of theirs was to sustain an empire, it worked for about 500 years; so maybe there’s merit when they’re done in a way that makes them stick.
Data analysts studying a fitness app pegged the second Friday in January as ‘quitter’s day’ with the mass abandonment of usage revealed in their research.
The University of NSW School of Psychology suggests that the neuroscience of wellbeing, and the ability to maintain resilience to stress and trauma requires various intervention techniques. Essentially, whatever the goal or new habit to instil it’s doomed to fail if it’s not personally meaningful in the first place.

It won’t. It’ll just fill you with self criticism instead of self compassion – inadvertently sabotaging yourself from the get-go.
Focus, direction and motivation come from goals that are well defined. Specificity makes it easier to track and quantify. Without it, achievements are more challenging to identify and makes chucking the whole thing in seem a reasonable option.
Habit stacking – where a new and desired behaviour is stacked onto an existing one – along with repeating actions, and overriding negative self-talk with positive, builds them to be automatic through associative learning. It’s the process that has you put your seatbelt on as soon as you get in the car. It’s hard to remember that at some point, that wasn’t an instinctive thing to do.
Naturally, changing whatever course we’re presently on to having better health is a useful thing to do. And a large part of being able to nurture and stabilise that, is having good oral health. The microbiome in our mouth is so relevant to the overall state of our wellbeing: from our gut and vital organ health, to cognitive and emotional balance. Maybe add flossing to that resolution list. Like the tick box to having read the terms and conditions – we say we’ve done it; we didn’t, and we actually never have.
Without making that decision to absolutely, positively and without question prioritise a diligent oral health routine and making 6-monthly dental appointments, the New Year new you is missing one of the least energy intensive ways to improve your health and self confidence.
A dental check-up and professional clean will do that for you.
Dental plaque isn’t always removed with brushing, and it creates the gum inflammation that is gingivitis. It sometimes has few symptoms, and left untreated it leads to gum disease. Of all the things you want to achieve this year, that’s definitely not one of them.
It’s hard to not view a year as personally successful when you’re really pleased with the smile on that face in the mirror.
So commit to the goals that are uplifting to your soul, tell someone whose opinion you value, be kind to yourself on this newly mapped journey that’s bound to have its fits and starts, and don’t make it complicated.
Seems like 2025 has a good chance of doing that all on its own.
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