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Cough Medication And Oral Health

Cough Medication And Oral Health

Having a cold can be a struggle for anyone. It’s a miserable feeling. When you can’t stop coughing or you don’t have enough tissues to keep your nose dry, you can get to the point where you’ll do anything to curb the feeling. Some medications can help minimize a lot of the symptoms you are experiencing. Unfortunately, they can also pose a risk to your oral health.

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What’s Dangerous About Cough Medicine?

The majority of medications for managing cold symptoms taste bad. Because of this, manufacturers add all sorts of ingredients to the mix to make them more tolerable. These medicines typically contain various ingredients that can put your oral health at risk for developing cavities and tooth decay.

The primary ingredients that concern your dentist in the Sacramento River Dental Group office would be alcohol and sugar. Why are these two ingredients bad for your oral health? Read below to find out more.

Cough Medicine Contains Alcohol.

Alcohol is one of the primary ingredients found in cough and cold medicines. One of the reasons why alcohol is bad for your oral health has to do with the drying effect it can have on your mouth. Alcohol is well-known to cause dry mouth. The problem with having a dry mouth, especially at night, is that it makes it much easier for dangerous and harmful bacteria to attack your teeth.

Your mouth typically produces excess saliva throughout the day and night to neutralize the bacteria and acid in your mouth. Unfortunately, when you take cold medicine, it can mitigate saliva production, which can result in an environment that’s not conducive to optimal oral health.

Cough Medicine Contains Sugars.

As mentioned previously, the majority of medication simply doesn’t taste good. After all, the ingredients in them aren’t made to taste good. That’s why these medicines typically have added sugar for taste. Having sugar added makes the medication easier to take. While the sugar does help make the medicine more tolerable for individuals, it also can harm your teeth. Two of the more traditional medications used to treat a cough include cough drops and cough syrup. Both of these medications tend to have added sugars in them.

The problem is only heightened when you are using cough drops and sucking them throughout the entire day. After all, at that point, the cough drops turn into candy. If you are sucking on cough drops throughout the day, it’s essentially going to be exposing your teeth to harmful sugar throughout the day. Why is sugar harmful? Well, the bacteria in your mouth feed off sugar. The problem is after they feed on the sugar, they release acid as a byproduct. This acid can erode your tooth enamel and result in you being at a heightened risk of experiencing tooth decay.

How To Protect Your Teeth During Flue Season?

While this article is meant to make you aware of the dangers of these medications, it’s not to make you turn away from them either. However, there are things you can effectively do to mitigate the damage they can cause to your oral health. Here are some of the top things you can do to mitigate the danger of using cold medicine.
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– Brush your teeth after you take medicine. This will allow you to get rid of the sugar and alcohol and keep it from sitting around in your mouth all day or night.
– Take the medication while you are eating. The act of chewing inherently produces saliva. Having more saliva in your mouth is going to help wash away some of the sugar and alcohol in the medication.
– Use pills instead of cough drops and syrup. A gel-filled pill is going to help you bypass some of the dangers to your mouth.

With the cold season approaching, use these tips to keep your mouth healthy. The dangers of cough medicine are out there. Using the tips above can help you minimize your symptoms while keeping your oral health in check.

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Sacramento River Dental Group – Candidate Privacy Notice

Sacramento River Dental Group is committed to respecting your online privacy and recognizes your need for appropriate protection and management of any personally identifiable information (“Personal Information”) you share with us.

Sacramento River Dental Group is a “data controller”. This means that we are responsible for deciding how we hold and use personal information about you. This privacy notice makes you aware of how and why your personal data will be used, namely for the purposes of the Sacramento River Dental Group employment recruitment process, and how long it will usually be retained.

Data protection principles

We will comply with data protection law and principles, which means that your data will be:

  • Used lawfully, fairly, and in a transparent way.
  • Collected only for valid purposes that we have clearly explained to you and not used in any way that is incompatible with those purposes.
  • Relevant to the purposes we have told you about and limited only to those purposes.
  • Accurate and kept up to date.
  • Kept only as long as necessary for the purposes we have told you about.
  • Kept securely.

The kind of information we hold about you

In connection with your application for work with us, we will collect, store, and use the following categories of personal information about you:

  • The information you have provided to us in your curriculum vitae and cover letter.
  • The information you have provided on our application form, including name, title, address, telephone number, personal email address, employment history, and qualifications.
  • Any information you provide to us during an interview.

How is your personal information collected?

We collect personal information about candidates from the following sources:

  • You, the candidate.
  • Recruitment agencies and vendors we have agreed on terms in place with
  • Professional networking profile
  • Employees and others who refer you to us


How we will use information about you?

We will use the personal information we collect about you to:

  • Assess your skills, qualifications, and suitability for the role.
  • Carry out background and reference checks, where applicable.
  • Communicate with you about the recruitment process.
  • Keep records related to our hiring processes.
  • Comply with legal or regulatory requirements.
  • We also need to process your personal information to decide whether to enter into a contract of employment with you.

Having received your CV, cover letter, and/or your application form, we will then process that information to decide whether you meet the basic requirements to be screened by our in-house recruitment team for the role. If you do, we will decide whether your application is strong enough to invite you for an interview, be it by telephone, in person, or by other electronic means. If we decide to engage you for an interview, we will use the information you provide to us at the interview to decide whether to offer you the role. If we decide to offer you the role, we will then take up references before confirming your appointment.

If you fail to provide personal information

If you fail to provide information when requested, which is necessary for us to consider your application (such as evidence of qualifications or work history), we will not be able to process your application successfully and we will not be able to take your application further.

Automated decision-making

You will not be subject to decisions that will have a significant impact on you based solely on automated decision-making.

Data sharing With third parties

  • We will only share your personal information with the following third parties for the purposes of processing your application; this may involve sharing your information with other companies within our own group if we consider they may have other relevant vacancies and only if you consent to such sharing
  • All our third-party service providers and other entities in the group are required to take appropriate security measures to protect your personal information in line with our policies. We do not allow our third-party service providers to use your personal data for their own purposes. We only permit them to process your personal data for specified purposes and in accordance with our instructions.

Data security

We have put in place appropriate security measures to prevent your personal information from being accidentally lost, used, or accessed in an unauthorized way, altered, or disclosed. In addition, we limit access to your personal information to those employees, agents, contractors, and other third parties who have a business need-to-know. They will only process your personal information on our instructions and they are subject to a duty of confidentiality.

We have put in place procedures to deal with any suspected data security breach and will notify you and any applicable regulator of a suspected breach where we are legally required to do so.

Data retention (how long will you use my information for)

  • We will retain your personal information for a period of 2 years after we have communicated to you our decision about whether to appoint you to the role. We will retain your personal information so that we can make you aware of any suitable alternative roles that arise during this period.
  • We further retain your personal information for that period so that we can show, in the event of a legal claim, that we have not discriminated against candidates on prohibited grounds and that we have conducted the recruitment exercise in a fair and transparent way. After this period, we will securely destroy your personal information in accordance with applicable laws and regulations.
  • If you would prefer that we did not retain your personal information, you can notify us at any time and we will delete your personal information.


Rights of access, correction, erasure, and restriction

Under certain circumstances, by law, you have the right to:

  • Request access to your personal information (commonly known as a “data subject access request”). This enables you to receive a copy of the personal information we hold about you and to check that we are lawfully processing it.
  • Request correction of the personal information that we hold about you. This enables you to have any incomplete or inaccurate information we hold about you corrected.
  • Request erasure of your personal information. This enables you to ask us to delete or remove personal information where there is no good reason for us to continue to process it. You also have the right to ask us to delete or remove your personal information where you have exercised your right to object to processing (see below).
  • Object to processing of your personal information where we are relying on a legitimate interest (or those of a third party) and there is something about your particular situation which makes you want to object to processing on this ground. You also have the right to object to where we are processing your personal information for direct marketing purposes.
  • Request the restriction of processing of your personal information. This enables you to ask us to suspend the processing of personal information about you, for example, if you want us to establish its accuracy or the reason for processing it.

Right to withdraw consent

When you applied for this role, you provided consent to us processing your personal information for the purposes of the recruitment exercise. You have the right to withdraw your consent for processing for that purpose at any time.

To withdraw your consent, please contact the Recruitment Manager. Once we have received notification that you have withdrawn your consent, we will no longer process your application, and, subject to our policies, we will dispose of your personal data securely.

Data protection officer

We have appointed a data protection officer (DPO) to oversee compliance with this privacy notice. If you have any questions about this privacy notice or how we handle your personal information, please contact the DPO by email, at info@jstreetdentalgroup.com.