10 BRUSHING MISTAKES WE MAKE EVERYDAY !

You might not think that you could go wrong when you’re brushing. But you will be surprised, that there are several common mistakes that we all make, when it comes to brushing our teeth. Just a small adjustment can get you on the way to better brushing habits. Here are 10 common brushing mistakes you might be making:

1] You pick the wrong toothbrush :

The job of our toothbrush is to clean and clear away the food particles that get stuck in between our teeth after having food. You may use a power toothbrush or a manual one. The key factor is it has to have soft bristles. The bristles need to be able to bend in, to get right under that gum. Moreover it helps remove the bacteria and plaque from your teeth and gums. Plaque is a soft and loose layer that forms on the surface of your teeth. It can cause gum disease and lead to tooth decay. Thus a soft brush is perfect to effectively do the job.

People think that the harder the bristles are, the more they’ll help to clean. But that’s not something necessarily true. Using a hard or even a medium brush in the long run, can damage your gums and even abrade away your teeth surface.

2] You use the wrong toothpaste:

There are several toothpastes available in the market and each one claiming to be the best. But did you know there are several types of toothpastes? Let me categorize a few: Anti-cavity toothpaste, Periodontal toothpaste, Sensitivity toothpaste, and many more. I’ll give an example which all of us are pretty familiar with. Did you know that the brand Sensodyne is for sensitive teeth?! I have seen a whole family using it. It is meant for people who are sensitive to cold or hot foods, especially the elderly people, not for normal healthy teeth. Now that is where you might be making a mistake.

No matter if a toothpaste is the best in the world, all you need to know is what is best for you. And for this, none other than your dentist can help you find out what your mouth needs exactly.

3] You don’t brush long enough:

You need to brush for entire two minutes. Most of us, in hurry, don’t even brush for a complete minute. One way is to use the stop watch on your phone and set it for 2 minutes. Another fun way to make sure your kids brush long enough, is to use a small two minute hour-glass timer placed on your shelf.

I see a lot of young people walking around with headphones on. Now that’s another way to make it happen. If you can leave your headphones in, put on a favourite song in the 2-3 minute range. So if you brush while you listen to one of your favourite songs, you’ve probably been in there long enough. This will ensure that you brush for a complete two minutes. Now don’t be surprised how long 2-minutes turned out to be than expected.

Two minutes is sufficient time for the toothpaste ingredients to act effectively to remove the dirt and kill the bacteria.

4] You go back and forth:

You need to brush away the dirt from in between your teeth vertically out. Brushing back and forth is not going to remove the meat or food stuck in between, but in turn, this action scrapes your teeth surface, which will be evident as horizontal cuts commonly seen in elderly people due to years of horizontal brushing, that too with hard brush.

The effective way is to brush vertically or in circular motions, swiping away from your gumline to opposite direction.

5] You forget the rest of your mouth:

Its been a traditional thinking that brushing means brushing only your teeth. Wrong! The idea is to clean your mouth which you use everyday. So you need to clean the bacteria and dirt on the rest part of your mouth.

Other than the teeth, food deposits on your gumline, tongue and inside of your lower teeth.

Firstly, you must also brush your gums while brushing teeth. Ideally you have to direct the brush at you gumline. Gumline is the area where your teeth and gums meet. Secondly, you must brush your tongue after brushing your teeth. The cause of bad smell in mouth, is mostly, because of the food particles on your tongue. So you must consider it crucial to brush away your tongue. Or atleast use a soft tongue cleaner.

6] You give too much gap between brushings:

Don’t you bath at an interval of every 24 hours atleast? Some people even bath every 8 hours. Well, your teeth needs to be cleaned off the food remnants or plaque in an interval of every 12 hours.

That is the time taken for a food deposit to harden and the bacteria to build up colonies in it. These hardened deposits are known as calculus and once hardened, cannot be removed by usual brushing but only by professional cleaning.

That is how the famous recommendation of “brushing twice a day, once in the morning and once at night” came into existence.

7] You hold on to your toothbrush way too long:

The life of a toothbrush, consistently used twice a day, 7 days a week, 31 days a month, is 3 months!

So after about 200 uses, that is about three months,you need to discard it and get a fresh one.

Why? Because the bristles flare out by this time. Poor angulation of bristles can hence make your brushing 70% less effective. It can also hurt your gums making it irritable.

8] You don’t check out your own teeth:

Often in hustle, we don’t bother to check our teeth. Since we don’t face any irritation or pain, or as a belief that brushing removes all dirt, we don’t check if there is any cavity, or food deposits. One thing we don’t know is that, a cavity doesn’t hurt or for the fact, give any sensation or alarm, unless the bacteria in the cavities spread on the inside of your teeth, which contains the nerves and blood vessels. That is when you feel toothache. But it would have already been too late to save the tooth with a simple filling. Why bring this chaos?!

Here is what we can do. After each time you brush, look into the mirror for any deposits on your gumline, both in the front and also on the inside of your teeth. Secondly, look for any black spots on every surface of your teeth.

If you see any of these, rush to your dentist and get rid of those hard deposits and those black spots as soon as you can.

9] You brush your teeth soon after or before eating:

Now there are few people who already have the habit of brushing twice a day and almost precisely following the correct duration, methods, brush etc etc. But they end up having issues. Here is yet another mistake we might be doing. And that’s brushing right before breakfast and right after dinner at night. Yes this is harmful.

What happens after brushing is, the minerals are still rebuilding up on the tooth surface. Having food right after brushing affects the remineralization pattern going on in your mouth. Hence weakening your teeth enamel and making them prone to caries.

On the contrary, soon after eating, your mouth holds an acidic environment. Brushing in this acidic niche can erode away your enamel surface.

Therefore, it is best recommended to give a 30 minutes gap between your brushing and eating and vice-versa.

10] You leave you brush overnight in the bathroom open:

This is probably the least possible mistake you might think. There are two things to this. One, many studies show that toothbrushes that are left open in bathroom have had fecal species on it. I don’t know how it get there, but it is a proven fact! In addition, insects and crawlies come and lick on your brush at night. This is again unhygienic.

So the best solution is to keep your brush outside your bathroom and importantly undercover.