What Should Your Daily Dental Routine Consist Of?
How do you maintain healthy teeth? The answer is quite simple, yet many people don’t manage to keep their teeth clean and white because either they don’t bother maintaining an effective oral care routine or they don’t know what goes into an effective daily dental routine.
If you happen to fall into the latter group - the one that isn’t quite sure the best way to maintain good dental care - then just read this quick list that explains the daily steps you can take to keep your smile sparkling like brand new!
Brush Your Teeth
This is perhaps the most obvious answer: If you want clean teeth, brush them.
But it’s not enough just to vigorously run a toothbrush over the nastiest parts of your teeth every morning and night for thirty seconds. There’s a tiny bit more work involved in brushing your teeth, but don’t sweat: It’s easy work that will yield excellent results!
Let’s start with the time you spend brushing: Thirty seconds just won’t cut it. You need to spend thirty seconds per QUADRANT in your mouth, meaning you should be spending two minutes brushing every time.
Some thought should go into how you brush. Blindly stabbing at your teeth will hardly do anything but lead to sore gums. No, good brushing requires that you brush all the surfaces of your teeth: front, back, and top. You should hold your toothbrush at a 45-degree angle pointed toward your gums.
Finally, be sure that you replace your toothbrush about every three months or when the bristles start to fade. Doing so will ensure that your brush is clean and your gums are not getting damaged by harsh, worn bristles.
Do all of this twice a day, and you’ll have the perfect tooth-brushing routine!
Flossing
You hear it and you hear it and you hear it some more from every dentist you meet: floss.
There’s a reason we hold this routine in such high regard: Because it’s vital to maintaining healthy teeth. Flossing removes food particles that your toothbrush can’t reach between. Flossing also removes plaque between your teeth, helping to prevent decay that can occur with plaque that brushing cannot remove.
Like brushing your teeth, flossing requires a little more than simply running minty string between your teeth. Now, before you read on, just go ahead and accept one thing: If you haven’t been following a flossing routine before now, there may be some blood and a little pain. That’s just the nature of the beast. But if you tough it out and keep at your flossing routine every single day, the pain will go away and you’ll get to enjoy a brighter, healthier smile than ever!
Now, for the how-to of flossing: Unlike brushing, you can floss only once a day. But like brushing, you’ll want to get every tooth in your head - meaning you have to make an effort to reach the backmost teeth that are so easy to ignore.
Wind a nice, longish string of floss around two fingers. As you work the floss in between your teeth, be sure to follow your teeth’s natural curve so that you avoid damaging your gums.
As you move from tooth to tooth, be sure to let go of the dirty floss and unwind some clean floss to avoid simply moving the mess around.
Do this for every tooth in your head, and do it daily - pain or not - and soon enough, your teeth will be stronger and healthier than ever before!
Mouth-Washing
Rinsing with a mouth wash is probably the easiest part of your daily dental routine.
It’s easy enough to do, after all. Just sip a small amount of mouthwash and swish it vigorously about your mouth for 30 or so of the most intense seconds of your life. Then spit, rinse, smile, and enjoy your clean pearly whites.
Tongue-Cleaning
Well, almost all. There’s still one more step to getting your mouth clean enough, actually.
That step is tongue-cleaning, something that many people seem to overlook completely when it comes to their daily dental routine. There are a few ways you can get your tongue cleaned. The first is with your toothbrush. Just put some toothpaste on it, and run your brush in small circles over your tongue.
You can also use floss. Just wrap a piece tightly around two fingers, pull it taut, and scrape it across the surface of your tongue.
If you are dedicated to cleaning your tongue, then you might have a tongue scraper. A tongue scraper works like the floss technique: Just pull the middle taut and, as its name says, get to scraping.
No matter what technique you use, you’ll want to try going as far back on your tongue without gagging yourself and you’ll want to rinse your mouth afterward.
The Bottom Line
Just follow these simple steps daily, and you’ll be enjoying the brightest teeth and the cleanest breath possible! To supplement this routine, be sure to schedule regular checkups and cleanings with your dental professional!
And one of the top dental professionals out there is Haworth Dental. If you want a top-quality checkup and cleaning, just contact our team of experts, and we’ll help keep your smile shining like new your whole life long!