Imagine being tethered to a stiff leather recliner. Your mouth is numb as synthetic latex fingers pry open your mouth. Giant rubber pads are shoved between your teeth. A rubber hose stabs underneath the tongue. It begins suctioning up the spittle and tears of its next victim. As a white light blinds, the sound is heard, the sound of a mechanical monstrosity revolving at over 1,600 times a second. It’s a drill. In your last moments of consciousness, before you lose yourself to a repressed memory, the drill makes contact with your tooth—your “broken” tooth—as a certified oral health practitioner begins the process of “repairing” your cavity, ensuring you are once again “healthy.”

As you are by now well aware , I hate drills and dentists. All they want is money from the insurance companies every time they press that X-Ray button. That’s why this Halloween, I want everyone reading this article to protect themselves and their loved ones from something that is very preventable: dental cavities.

A cavity is an indent in your teeth caused not a single bacterium, but a colony of hundreds of millions of bacteria. When buildup of bacteria occurs, plaque forms. Plaque is a buildup of colonies upon colonies of bacteria. This leads to a fissure in your teeth, causing a root canal that could eventually lead to heart disease.

How can one prevent a dental cavity? I would like to share with you my checklist for oral health.

Brush teeth after every meal. Simple enough. I brush mine two, sometimes seventeen times a day.

Avoid an excess of sugar. Check. I only drink three Starbucks’ Macchiatos a day.

Floss. Check. I floss whenever I eat a steak, which is once a month.

Avoid phosphoric acid. Yes, the fourth ingredient in Coke. Not only does it prevent you from throwing up consuming all that high fructose corn syrup in one setting, but it also leaches calcium from the body. Remember, calcium builds strong bones!

Swish mouth with warm salt water daily. Salt kills bacteria and prevents them from multiplying. Salt water is also easier on the mouth than an antiseptic such as Listerine.

Oil pull before bed. It reduces the bacteria in our mouths that thrive on sugar.

Chew gum. Although there is speculation that it leads to tooth erosion, chewing gum stimulates salivation (who really chews that hard anyway?) which lowers bacteria numbers as well as prevent them from building colonies.

So this Halloween, please don’t end up traumatized like I’ve been when I was a naïve little boy who ate too many sweets and drank too many cokes—brush your teeth.