You need gums – pick the right toothbrush

Brushing and flossing makes your mouth healthy and your teeth happy. Photo: Vincenzo Ravina

Vincenzo Ravina
vravina@gmail.com

Dana Macarone says the first patient she ever saw had a condition called “white hairy tongue.”

What’s that?

“Exactly like it sounds. It’s a white, furry coating on the tongue.”

Oh.

Macarone is a dental hygienist, and she says after dealing with white hairy tongue, she felt she could deal with anything.

“When people come in with their mouth full of disgusting plaque and food debris, it’s more (than) just annoying. Like, ‘Brush your teeth, dude.’ I’m not really grossed out by it, it’s just annoying. I can handle a mouth full of blood, no problem.”

She works at two offices – one in New York and one in New Jersey.

No Halifax-based dental hygienists returned my calls, so I had to look beyond our borders and put the call out for hygienists on Twitter. Why didn’t I just give up? Because dental hygiene is important.

Brushing your teeth after each meal and flossing before sleep will help keep your mouth healthy and happy. We all know that.

But what do you brush with? There are electric brushes, manual brushes and the vibrating Pulsar brush. Is an electric brush better than a manual brush? What toothpastes will get our teeth whitest?

Macarone was kind enough to let me call her, long distance, to ask.

Macarone says a lot of people say that the electric toothbrushes make their head hurt.

She says there have been studies that show that electric brushes do help reduce plaque.

“But if you’re using a manual toothbrush the right way and using the right technique, you can still do a good job.”

The Canadian Dental  Association says you should be brushing your teeth with a soft-bristled brush, making gentle, circular motions. Pay extra attention to the gum line and your back teeth.

Macarone says one of the most common mistakes people make with their dental hygiene routine is brushing too hard.

“People think they have to scrub their teeth to get them clean,” Macarone says, “but they end up brushing really aggressively and they scrub their enamel off and then they scrub their gums off.”

Which is not good, you see, because you need gums.

But back to the Pulsar. What a useless toothbrush. It doesn’t have a spinning head or anything! It just shakes around and feels weird.

Hilary Boudreau, a dental hygiene student at Dalhousie University, says the only benefit of a Pulsar is that people might be encouraged to brush more, or for longer periods of time, if their brush is shaking like a terrified Irish wolfhound.

Or, if someone has arthritis, a Pulsar might make brushing less difficult.

When it comes to the paste on your toothbrush, don’t expect whitening toothpastes to get your teeth whiter.

Macarone says, “A toothpaste advertises itself as whitening, it usually means that it has an agent in it that’s abrasive to polish off
surface stains, but it doesn’t
actually lighten the colour of your teeth.”

But it isn’t like having white teeth makes them any healthier.

“I have no idea when it started, because even in the ’90s and the early 2000s, I think, if you watched movies and TV, people still had
natural shades of teeth. And then suddenly people just became obsessed with white teeth to a creepy extent.”

So, you don’t really need the fancy electric brushes or the
expensive toothpastes. You just need proper brushing technique and to floss more regularly.

And for the sake of your hygienist, brush before going in for a cleaning.