Are we brushing our teeth the wrong way?

LONDON. – For a routine most of us have been practising since before we were tall enough to see into the bathroom mirror, we are remarkably bad at brushing our teeth.

In Sweden, one study found as few as one in 10 people practice the best brushing technique.

The British health insurer Bupa found that almost half of respondents did not know how to brush their teeth properly in a survey of 2,000 people in the UK.

“It is very likely that anyone who has not had formal instructions from their dentist or hygienist brushes incorrectly,” says Josefine Hirschfeld, associate professor and specialist in restorative dentistry at the University of Birmingham in the UK. “From my experience, this will be the vast majority of the population in any country.”

Perhaps that is not surprising, given the bamboozling variety of information available on how you should brush your teeth.

One study found at least 66 differing, sometimes conflicting, pieces of expert advice.

“I think it’s very confusing for the consumer,” says Nigel Carter, chief executive of the Oral Health Foundation in the UK.

This confusion is amplified by the array of dental products available to buy, from tongue-scrapers to interdental waterjets.

So, what exactly are most of us getting wrong, and how can we change our routine to make sure we brush our teeth effectively?

“Lots of patients understand that what they need to do is remove food remnants,” says Hirschfeld.

These bacteria and other microorganisms grow inside everyone’s mouth, and form a claggy biofilm commonly known as dental plaque.

It is made up of around 700 different species of bacteria, the second-greatest diversity in the human body after the gut, as well as a host of fungi and viruses. “They are living in the sticky film stuck to the teeth and also to the soft tissues,” says Hirschfeld.

“This sticky film can’t be easily rinsed off – it really needs to be manually cleaned.”

The most important place to remove it from is not in fact the teeth, but the gumline. This is where microbes are best able to infiltrate the gum tissue and cause inflammation, and eventually conditions such as periodontitis.

In fact, “brushing your teeth” is something of a misnomer. “Think of brushing your gumline, rather than the teeth themselves,” says Hirschfeld. “The teeth will then be brushed automatically.”

So what exactly is the best way to do this?

One of the most effective ways to clear the biofilm is known as “the modified Bass technique”.

This requires considerably more manual dexterity than the vague put-the-brush-in-your-mouth-and-look-busy method that many of us use, as I soon find out. – BBC.