All You Need to Know About Oral Hygiene
We are all told about how important it is to brush regularly by our dentist but what most dentists don’t share with their patients is technique. At Arlington Dental Excellence we pride ourselves in not only fixing our patients teeth but in educating them on how to maintain perfect smiles. For our patient on their first visit, they are given a 15 minutes educational seminar about the correct technique for oral hygiene. Briefly, we will discuss what is covered in our seminars.
How Often should I be Brushing?
Brushing as we all know should be done at least twice a day; the first is following breakfast and the second time is right before bed.
Manual Vs. Electric?
What is recommended by Dr. Layth and his associates is to use Oral-B 5000 Electric toothbrush, it is far superior to manual due to the fact that an electric toothbrush doesn’t miss what a manual toothbrush would.
How long should I brush for?
It is highly recommended that you brush the top for at least 1 min and the bottom for another minute.
How Do I brush?
For the top Dr. Layth recommends that you start at the gums and brush down uni-directional in half circles. You are never supposed to brush up and down and that is due to the fact that over time it would cause your gums to recede.
For the bottom, you start at the gums and brush only upwards to prevent your gums from receding down.
What kind of toothpaste should I use?
We tell all our patients to use Colgate total or Crest Advanced Health. Whitening toothpaste has a lot less concentrations of fluoride which is the main ingredient that helps prevents cavities. For our patients that are more susceptible to cavitation, we recommend President 5000+ which is prescription strength toothpaste due to the amount of fluoride it contains.
When and How Should I floss?
We recommend that you floss daily right before bed and before you brush your teeth. You wrap around each tooth in half circles and pull everything off starting at the gum and away to remove all tartar between teeth.
Which mouthwash should I use?
Generally, we recommend to our patients to use Listerine for 2 minutes right after flossing. The Listerine that contains alcohol is what we recommend because the alcohol acts as an antiseptic and cleans your gums. For patients experiencing periodontal disease, Dr. Layth would prescribe them special mouthwash to address their problems.
This is all that we are going to cover for this week’s blog and please if you have any further questions feel free to contact Arlington Dental Excellence
