Dental Homecare Routine
All our lives, we have been told we need to brush and floss. The why is pretty straight forward; to prevent cavities, to keep our gums clean and healthy, prevent bad breath, and to maintain our smiles!
And it should be easy, right? Brush, floss, rinse, repeat. What most people don’t know is that a lot of factors go into keeping up with homecare and getting the most out of the work you put in.
Things like your toothbrush, the floss you use, the time of day you do it, even the order your routine is completed can all contribute to how much you actually benefit from each step.
At Fairmount Dental Center, we put a lot of emphasis on preventive care. The more work you put in at home, the less time you have to spend time with us! We want our patients to take the tools we provide and the tips so they can achieve their best cleaning all year long, not just when they come in to see us.
Below, you will find our recommended hygiene routine, advice for different tools, and reasoning behind these steps. Your oral health plays a huge role in your overall health and we want your dental homecare routine to be the easiest step in taking care of the full picture of you.
Make it stand out.
Toothbrush
A rechargeable electric toothbrush will always be better for you than a manual toothbrush. With an electric toothbrush, it’s easier to clean the hard to reach spaces such as the cheek side of your top back teeth or the tongue side of your bottom front teeth. Rather than making the brushing motion yourself, an electric toothbrush does the brushing for you while you hold it in place.
If you find it difficult to reach the very back of your top teeth, try shifting your lower jaw towards the direction you’re working on, it may give you enough space to get your brush back there.
When brushing, make sure you brush along your gum line as well. It’s important to brush not just the top and sides of your teeth but your gums. Use light to medium pressure in those areas to avoid hurting your gums.
Since you still want to replace your toothbrush head every 3-6 months, a rechargeable model will be the most cost effective choice. Our office prefers Oral-B spin brushes and SonicCare toothbrushes due to the size, ease of use, and they can keep track of how long you’re brushing so you get the full 2 minutes recommended. These are frequently on sale at Costco!
Floss
Any floss is better than no floss, but nothing can beat classic string floss. U-shaped flossers are okay for getting things out between your teeth, but regular string floss works better at hugging around your teeth without hurting your gums. You want to have enough tension that the floss can go between your teeth, but not enough that you’re cutting yourself. Once the floss is between your teeth, gently hug around each tooth down to the gums. The purpose is not to push the floss so hard you bleed, just enough to hug around your gums. Even if your teeth don’t touch and it’s an open space, you can still floss around the tooth. Your toothbrush most likely isn’t able to reach that area, so floss is the best way to keep it clean.
Waterpiks are also advertised as a replacement to floss but they should be something you use in addition to it, not instead of. Again, nothing will replace the clean you get from classic string floss.