7 Tiny Daily Teeth Care Habits That Keep Your Smile Bright Without Extra Trips To The Dentist

Fuss-free, low-cost daily moves that help you skip unexpected toothaches and embarrassing coffee stains without fancy dental products

If you are one of the people who squeeze toothpaste on the brush right after jumping out of bed before touching any food, you are not alone, but you are also making one of the most common small mistakes that erodes your teeth slowly over the years. Most of us learned to brush our teeth as soon as we wake up when we were in primary school, and we never questioned this routine for decades, but the logic behind this old habit is totally upside down. After 7 to 8 hours of sleep, your mouth is full of anaerobic bacteria that multiplied all night long, and if you eat breakfast right after brushing all those bacteria away, the food you eat will mix with the trace fluoride on your teeth and create tiny acidic residues that stick to your enamel for hours. The far better move is to rinse your mouth with a sip of plain warm water right after you get up, then go ahead and eat your breakfast, drink your morning coffee or orange juice, and wait for 20 to 30 minutes before you pick up your toothbrush to do a full brushing. The 20 minute waiting window is critical, because all the acidic food and drinks you consume during breakfast will soften your tooth enamel temporarily, and brushing immediately will scrape off the top protective layer of your teeth before it gets a chance to re-harden naturally.

Another almost universal mistake that most people make every single day is washing their mouth out aggressively right after they finish brushing their teeth. A huge number of people will spit out the big chunk of foam, then grab their cup of water and swish it around their mouth three or four times, making sure no trace of minty toothpaste is left on their tongue or teeth. This action might make your mouth feel extra clean for the first five minutes, but you are basically washing away 90 percent of the fluoride that your toothpaste is designed to leave on your tooth surface. Fluoride needs at least 15 minutes to penetrate the tiny pores of your tooth enamel and rebuild the mineral structure that got worn down by daily acidic food, and if you wash it all away immediately after brushing, you are throwing away 80 percent of the benefit of that whole two minute brushing session. The correct way to handle this step is super simple: spit out all the extra thick foam in your mouth, and only rinse your lips quickly with a tiny bit of water to wash off the toothpaste residue stuck on the edge of your mouth. Do not drink any water, eat any food, or use mouth wash for at least 15 minutes after brushing, and you will notice your teeth feel smoother and stay whiter for much longer after just a week of trying this.

Plenty of people buy fancy imported flavored dental floss and end up not using it at all, because they think flossing hurts their gums and makes them bleed every time they try. The problem is never your gums, the problem is that you are using the floss completely wrong. You do not need to jam the floss deep under your gum line and saw it back and forth hard to get all the food debris out of your teeth gaps. All you need to do is slide the thin floss gently down along the surface of one tooth, let it rest lightly right at the point where the tooth meets the gum, then move the floss up and down along the side of the tooth with tiny, gentle motions. Do not pull it straight out after you finish one side, slide it across the contact point between two teeth to clean the other side completely, and you will never get bleeding gums after you master this small movement. You do not need to buy any expensive whitening floss or floss with extra herbal additives, the cheapest plain un-waxed floss you can find at any grocery store works the best, because it is thin enough to slide through even the tiniest gaps between crowded teeth without breaking.

There is a tiny, super underrated teeth care trick that costs less than 1 dollar a day and works better than most of the expensive mouth washes you see advertised online. Keep a small pack of sugar free xylitol chewing gum in your desk at work, and chew one piece for exactly 5 minutes right after you finish your lunch or afternoon milk tea. After you eat any food that is starchy or sugary, the pH level in your mouth will drop to a very acidic level that makes your tooth enamel start to de-mineralize little by little. Chewing sugar free gum makes your salivary glands produce 10 times more saliva than normal, and your natural saliva is packed with calcium and phosphate ions that can reverse the very early stage of enamel demineralization and bring your mouth back to a neutral, healthy pH level within minutes. This trick is perfect for people who do not have time to brush their teeth after lunch at the office, and it can also get rid of the leftover garlic or onion smell from your takeout lunch without using any strong flavored mouth wash that dries out your mouth.

None of these small habits require you to spend hundreds of dollars on luxury electric toothbrushes or professional at-home whitening kits, and none of them force you to give up your favorite iced coffee, fruit smoothies or sour candy. All you need to do is make a tiny adjustment to the daily routine you are already going through every day, and you will cut down your chance of getting new cavities by more than 60 percent according to public dental health data. A lot of people only start to pay attention to oral care after they get their first horrible toothache that keeps them up all night, and by that time the decay has already gone deep enough to need a complicated and expensive root canal treatment. If you stick to these small easy habits for a year or two, your next regular dental checkup will surprise both you and your dentist, because you will have far fewer hidden dental problems than most of people in your age group, and your teeth will stay strong enough to let you enjoy every delicious meal you love for decades to come.