Think you’ve got this self-care thing in the bag? I regret to inform you, you may be doing it wrong. At least when it comes to your teeth. Relax, you can keep your bubble baths.
Whether you diligently brush your teeth for at least two minutes every day and night, or if (like me) you have a tendency to only brush your teeth ‘after the next coffee’ and then end up forgetting altogether, it turns out we may all be in need of a little dental education.
And what’s TikTok for if not making us re-evaluate our heavily ingrained life-choices? Yep, we are once again taking health advice from an app aimed at teenagers. However, particularly in this case, we’ve got good cause.
Dr Anna Peterson is a London-based dentist who uses her TikTok platform to educate people about dental hygiene in a fun, accessible way. And when it comes to mouthwash, she’s not holding back.
In her first of three educational videos, Dr Anna says, “Using mouthwash after brushing your teeth is going to give you tooth decay.
“So stop doing it.”
I mean, that’s us told.
In her second video, she explains, “Your toothpaste that you brush your teeth with has around 1450ppm (parts per million) fluoride.
“Your mouthwash has only 220ppm fluoride. This is a much lower concentration and it’s not enough to protect your teeth from the sugars that you’re going to eat and drink.
“So when you brush your teeth and then you rinse with mouthwash straight away, you just rinse off all the high concentration fluoride for a very low concentration fluoride.”
Dr Anna then clarifies that she’s not against mouthwash itself because she actually does recommend it to some of her patients. Although she does specify that, “Not every patient needs it.” Adding,”I certainly don’t tell them to use [mouthwash] after brushing.”
In her final video on the matter, Dr Anna explains why we even have mouthwash in the first place. She explains, “Mouthwash is a fantastic product to use but you have to use it at the right time of day.
“So you’ll wake up in the morning, floss your teeth, brush your teeth and then go and have breakfast. And pretty much anything that you’re going to eat will contain sugars of some sort.
“What happens when you eat sugars is that your mouth becomes acidic, so it drops in pH. It drops below 5.5 pH, which is the critical pH, and [dentists] call this an ‘acid attack.’
“During an acid attack, your teeth start to dissolve. If you were to brush your teeth at this point, what’s happening is you’re brushing the acid into your tooth. And this causes tooth erosion.
“So to get your teeth out of this critical zone, use mouthwash.”
So it’s mouthwash after breakfast NOT after brushing. Got it?
