Do you brush your teeth often in a hurry? You can hurt yourself

First rule: small or medium head. Second: low to medium degree of hardness. Using too large a toothbrush makes it difficult to reach farther teeth. In turn, hard brushes can damage the enamel, especially in the cervical area of ​​the teeth. Electric toothbrushes are recommended for people with less manual dexterity.

It can be dangerous, especially if we eat foods with a low pH, e.g. fruit (mainly citrus) or drink fruit juices. By brushing your teeth immediately after a meal, we do not allow saliva hormones to balance the pH level in the mouth, and by this we rub fruit acids into the tooth enamel. This leads to the erosion of the enamel and the so-called wedge cavities that cause tooth sensitivity. We should wait 20-30 minutes. Rinse your mouth with water immediately after eating.

Avoid preparations with high abrasive parameters, such as smoking or whitening toothpastes. Overusing them can lead to enamel erosion and, paradoxically, increase the teeth’s tendency to absorb food pigments.

Washing liquids with chlorhexidine and alcohol are recommended only for patients after oral surgery. They are used for about two or three weeks. Used for longer, they cause tooth discoloration. – On the other hand, ethanol in mouthwash can dry out the mouth and sometimes even cause carcinogenicity (it may contribute to the development of cancer). Therefore, before choosing a fluid, it is worth checking its composition – advises Joanna Mażul-Busler.

But we also shouldn’t overdo it and brush our teeth for too long. In this case, it is similar to a hard brush – brushing the teeth for too long may contribute to the formation of wedge defects, i.e. non-carious origin, and gingival recession (exposed necks and roots of the teeth).

Most often, we brush our teeth too short. As a result, they are not washed thoroughly. Patients usually limit themselves to the surface of the teeth, forget about the lingual and palatal surfaces, adds the Warsaw dentist. The optimal time for brushing your teeth is two or three minutes. A very convenient method is to divide the jaw into four parts and spend about half a minute on it. You can also decide to brush your teeth with an electric toothbrush. Most of them use vibration to measure the minimum brushing time.

Dentists recommend brushing your teeth with several techniques. One of them is the sweeping method. It consists in brushing the teeth downwards in the jaw and upwards in the lower jaw. This protects the teeth from a premature recession that still occurs with age. It also prevents plaque from being forced into the gingival pockets. Specialists remind that brushing the teeth with scrubbing movements, i.e. horizontal movements, causes abrasion of the enamel in the cervical area.

Too intensive use of the brush leads to the fact that we damage the so-called gingival attachment. The result is bleeding of the gums and tooth sensitivity in the cervical area. For people prone to excessive pressure on the toothbrush, specialists recommend electric toothbrushes that switch off when too much pressure is applied. The symptom of using too much force is the bristle breakage in a new brush, e.g. after a week of using it.

We should brush our teeth after each main meal – at least twice a day. When this is impossible, the solution is to rinse your mouth with water, for example. – It is very dangerous for our teeth to refrain from brushing after dinner – blows Joanna Mażul-Busler. – Then the food remains in the mouth throughout the night, leading to the development of bacterial strains responsible for the development of caries and periodontal diseases.

We cannot clean the interdental spaces with the brush alone. Therefore, we absolutely should use dental floss. Failure to floss leads to the formation of caries on the contact surfaces. It is best to choose a wide thread, such as tape, and not insert it with great force between the teeth, so as not to injure the gums.