Toothbrushes and Floss….Which should you be using?
On the market these days are a number of different toothbrushes and flosses that try and differentiate themselves by features such as criss-cross bristles, flossing bristles, angled heads etc. which are all designed to help keep your teeth cleaner. The same can be said for floss, with variations including tape, waxed, and non waxed. So with all the different options, which one is truly the one to use?
Toothbrushes
The toothbrush is the staple to keeping your teeth clean, when used correctly it can remove a great deal of plaque and food debris from your teeth. Essentially the best toothbrush is the one you actually pick up and use regularly with the correct technique. The only criteria we recommend for picking your toothbrush is ensuring it is either a ‘soft’ or ‘extra soft’ bristled brush with the smallest brush head you can find. Anything that is more course than ‘soft’ is in actuality too hard for your teeth, and over the long term will cause you to brush your enamel away! A smaller brush head will enable to you reach your back molar teeth more easily to clean them.
Motorised/electric toothbrushes are also highly recommended. The small head and oscillating bristles ensure you can reach each tooth almost individually to ensure it is cleaned adequately.
Floss.
As with toothbrushes, the best type of floss is the one you actually pick up and use. Everyone will have their preference for which they find easier to use, and as such we recommend trying a few different types to see what you like and sticking to that. The ‘tape’ variety of floss tends to be easier to get between teeth that are very tightly placed together, and we do find that the waxed flosses do not tend to fray as quickly.
Waterpiks are a new product on the market which use blasts of water sprayed between teeth to act as floss. In our opinion Waterpiks are useful for a handful of cases such as cleaning under bridgework and around braces, but does not have the efficacy of mechanical removal when using floss.