“Almost everyone brushes their teeth,” concluded a group of researchers from the University of Gothenburg in 2012. The problem is that “only one in ten does it well.” The results were limited to Sweden, but from what we know They are still perfectly valid In the Western world: we spend a disproportionate amount of time and resources cleaning our teeth poorly.
It’s not just the citizens’ fault. And it is that, as the BBC explainedstudies have found at least “66 different types of expert advice, sometimes contradictory to each other.” So we’ve asked ourselves… what does the available evidence say about brushing your teeth?
How to brush your teeth? The most effective way to brush our teeth is one that understands why we brush them. We usually believe that we brush to remove food from our mouths; but there is something else. The teeth develop a dense biofilm (dental plaque) that surrounds them and is not easy to remove with just rinsing.
We brush our teeth to manually remove that sticky layer as much as possible. To remove it from the teeth and gums, of course.
There is various techniques for thisbut now we are going to focus on the most important: that “the movement should not be made horizontally, but rather the brush should move from the gums to the bottom of the tooth”, explained the dentist Juan Casado Adán. And go through all the teeth, one by one, without much pressure or haste.
Oh, and by the way, after you brush, spit. But don’t rinse. If you do, most of the fluoride ends up going down the drain.
How many times do you have to brush your teeth? Twice at least the experts tell us: one before we go to sleep and another as soon as we wake up. It may seem strange, but it has an explanation: saliva plays a key role in inhibiting bacterial plaque. but while we sleep we produce less saliva.
Like, while we sleep, our mouth becomes more hospitable to bacteria, prior washing helps to eliminate ‘residues’ that bacteria can use to develop their activity and weaken the enamel. For this reason, the key function of washing after waking up is to renew the bacteria-laden environment in our mouth and help saliva fulfill its function.
Shouldn’t you brush your teeth after meals? In reality, by using medium-hard brushes, we can brush our teeth as many times as we want. And yes, it is usually a good idea to do it after eating because this way we remove waste that bacteria could use.
However, there are exceptions: if we have consumed a lot of acidic drinks (“such as soda, coffee or alcohol”), sweets or vomited, brushing immediately may be a mistake. According to Luis Cabezas Vallejo, pediatric nurseWhen the pH of the mouth is acidic, the enamel weakens and brushing at that time can cause damage (even if it is negligible).
As Juan Carlos Llodra explained on ABCdeputy secretary of the Executive Committee of the General Council of Dentist Associations of Spain, in this situation it is better to wait, let the saliva neutralize the acids (or sugars) and then brush.
Image | Quang Tri Nguyen
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