Effective oral health care will not succeed without the right tools. No matter how much you instill the importance of proper dental health care to your kids, if they don’t have the equipment, it won’t amount the anything. Knowledge of the routine goes hand in hand with the oral health care tools for effective dental health care.
To ensure a healthy smile, one needs more than knowledge of good brushing techniques. Dental health care education needs to include imparting knowledge about the best tools to use to maintain oral health care. A good toothbrush should be sufficient to start you off, but it’s also not enough. As we know, unless we brush our teeth well, we’re bound to miss a few spots of plaque and bacteria here and there. This is where other dental tools come in.
If you want to keep showing the world your beautiful smile, here are five of the best tools you can use for effective health care. Check them out to see if you already have all of them, or if you need to pick up a couple on the way home.
Fluoride Toothpaste
As we know, fluoride in water, mouthwash, and toothpaste help prevent cavities in both adults and kids. They do their utmost to strengthen exposed roots and weak spots, as well as prevent the early stages of tooth decay. Sure, it’s certainly true that overexposure to fluoride can be harmful. However, the benefits far outweigh the dangers.
To ensure that fluoride remains a friendly element, kids under six years old must be given a pea-sized amount of fluoridated toothpaste. It would even be better if they used toothpaste without fluoride to make sure they don’t ingest an ungodly amount of it. After all, they’re still kids, and they don’t know when to spit or swallow whatever is in their mouths.
Once they grow older and know better, then they can use fluoride toothpaste. It should help them establish a better oral health care routine, along with flossing and using mouthwash in case they missed a spot. Tooth decay and other dental issues are pretty expensive to treat. This is why people should invest in the best tools for the most effective oral health care. And fluoride toothpaste is number one on the list.
Fluoride Mouthwash
The second must-have in terms of the dental tool is fluoride mouthwash. It doesn’t only help clean the areas you miss when you brush your teeth—it also helps strengthen your tooth enamel, which is an extra layer of protection for your teeth. What’s best is that you don’t need to use it after every meal. You can just do so at night after you’ve cleaned your teeth and before you call it a night.
Dentists usually recommend that you use 20mL every time—exactly the right amount for your 30 to 45 seconds of gargling. And yes, since you gargled it, you should spit it out instead of swallowing it. That’s straight-up unsanitary. Besides, we’re talking about fluoride mouthwash. We should never invest more than we need.
Electric Brush
Some people prefer to brush manually, and that’s okay. However, dentists usually recommend power brushes for better cleanliness and overall upkeep. According to several studies, the round brush heads and micro-vibrating bristles of most power brushes are way better at removing bacteria and plaque, even in the hardest-to-reach places.
In addition to being better at reducing plaque, it has already been proven as well that electric toothbrushes are better at preventing gum disease as well, and not just gum disease caused by plaque. It’s all-around better, especially for people who are too intense and rigorous in their teeth brushing activities. It’s also way better for people who have ailments like arthritis that prevent them from doing a thorough job of their dental routine.
Lastly, electric toothbrushes are excellent tools for kids. As we know, we need to establish a dental health care routine for our children while they’re still young. As such, they need to be shown how to brush their teeth properly, as well as for how long. Electric toothbrushes for kids have features like an app you can connect to it complete with entertaining instructions, a timer, and enjoyable kiddy characters to make sure they pay attention.
The use of an electric toothbrush is similar to the manual ones. You still need to dry the brush first to remove the initial plaque build-up on your teeth and gums before you use the fluoridated toothpaste for your second brushing. After all, it is the physical action of the power brush’ bristles coming in contact with your teeth surface that cleans the said surface, not the toothpaste.
Floss
No, brushing your teeth is not enough to maintain your oral health. Your power brushes can only do so much. What about the plaque and bacteria between your teeth? You can’t just ignore that and hope it goes away without doing anything about it. This is where floss comes in.
Floss is one of the most important tools you just have to have to ensure oral health. It gets in between your teeth to clean them of plaque, bacteria build-up, and leftover food particles. With a piece of floss, you don’t need to feel uncomfortable about the string of meat stuck between your teeth that you somehow can’t clean with your toothbrush. You can just snip off a thread and go to town.
Tongue Scraper
Last but not least is the tongue scraper. Contrary to how ads usually market toothpaste, plaque and bacteria aren’t just found in your teeth but also on your tongue. If you want to do a thorough clean, you can’t forget your tongue. In addition to ensuring a clean tongue, using a tongue scraper will help prevent bad breath as well as slow down the overall build-up of plaque on your teeth.
Sure, you can use your toothbrush to scrape your tongue. However, since it’s made mainly for teeth, it would be far more effective to get a tongue scraper and use it instead.
Ideally, for better oral health upkeep, you need to use the mouthwash, floss, and tongue scrapper together with your power brush and fluoride toothpaste. They are not substitutes for brushing your teeth. Using all five tools together should serve to create a very effective routine to protect your teeth from gum and tartar-related diseases.