Oral hygiene is very important to our overall health. For those with braces, careful cleaning is even more important. However, we can do more for our teeth than just brush, floss, and have periodic fluoride treatments. What we eat also has a huge impact on the health of our gums and teeth alike.
You might have a favorite toothbrush that you have used for years and just love the color and the feel of it, but this might not be the right thing to do. Old toothbrushes do not do your teeth any favors at all. The bristles become worn down and distorted and even fall out – leaving you with a matted mass of thriving bacteria that are just waiting to chew into your teeth.
It might be a surprise to you but the care of your toothbrush is extremely important. In fact, it is almost as important as the teeth cleaning process itself. Once you have finished your morning brushing and flossing session, you will most likely throw the used floss out with the trash but certainly not the toothbrush. Many people may leave it dripping wet on the side of the hand basin ready for its evening clean. That is what you certainly should not do.
You may think that once you have piled your toothbrush with peppermint smelling, fluoridated toothpaste that your toothbrush is now so well disinfected that bacteria couldn’t hope to escape wherever they happen to be hiding. This is far from the truth. Bacteria are a lot more resilient than that. The worst thing you can do with a toothbrush is to hang it out to dry without giving it a rinse in warm water first. Most of that fluoridated toothpaste was transferred to your mouth via your toothbrush. When you spit it all out, there is little remaining on your toothbrush to deter the bacteria.
Tooth brushing is a holistic task and is designed to ensure that teeth are thoroughly cleaned within the recommended two minutes that it takes to undertake the job well. Skipping over the front surface of your teeth, both front and rear, is not what is called a good teeth cleaning job. Places where you don’t clean, plaque and bacteria will thrive and the end result will be cavity formation and tooth decay. In the long run, this will lead to tooth loss and expensive tooth restorative treatment – and all because in your routine teeth brushing event you did not bother to clean the inner surfaces of your teeth.
We are all creatures of habit at some time or another. Holding our toothbrushes in the same hand day in day out is no exception. Many of us will use our brush with the very same routine every day, sidling it from one side of our mouth to another. Unless we are pro-active teeth cleaners, we will most likely spend a lot more time on the first minute of the teeth cleaning exercise than the last minute, meaning that the place we start this daily routine in will most likely get more attention than anywhere else in the mouth. This is a dangerous practice to get into. It’s like the pesky mosquito which always knows which part of your flesh you expose on a hot sultry night and makes a beeline for it to get its daily feed.
