How to Brush & Floss at Home

All Barotz Dental patients are familiar with the home care kit we send them home with after each visit. The toothbrush and floss are nice, but it can be difficult to hang on to the printed instructions. Not to worry! We have made our home care kit instructions available to everyone here on the worldwide web! We’ve even added a demonstrational video. For more tips on proper home care, check out our Dental Tips board on Pinterest!

Home Care Instructions Video:

Detailed, written instructions below!

Proper Home Care Instructions

To Help you Maintain Good Oral Health for your Teeth & Gums

We’ll start by discussing what causes tooth and gum disease:

  • Plaque, a mixture of sugar, protein and mucous, is the cause of tooth and gum disease.
  • Plaque is soft and sticky like honey. It forms after you eat sugar or starch (carbohydrates) with sucrose causing the most harmful plaque build-up.
  • Bacteria (germs, bugs) colonize the plaque, eat the plaque and then form waste products. That waste is acidic and harmful to your teeth.
  • After 30 hours enough bacteria have colonized the plaque to inflame the gums.


The key to maintaining good oral health is THOROUGH PLAQUE REMOVAL:

Thorough plaque removal requires the use of a system, therefore a systematic approach is critical. The tooth surfaces that contact your lip, tongue and cheek are called self-cleansing areas, and plaque is removed on its own from these areas. As such, when cleaning your mouth, focus on the areas that are not self-cleansing. There are three such areas:

1) Between the teeth and gums
2) In the grooves/pits of the teeth
3) In between the teeth

A tooth brush can remove plaque from only two of these three areas:

1) Between the teeth and gums
2) In the grooves/pits of the teeth

FLOSSING

The most effective way to remove plaque from the surfaces in between the teeth

*REMEMBER: You are flossing to remove plaque, a soft and sticky substance, not food. Therefore, it’s critical that you wrap the floss around the sides of each tooth and go up and down the side of the tooth several times.

Only use a back and forth motion to get the floss in between the teeth. If your teeth are not flossed every day, the bacteria will build-up enough to cause inflammation.

Three Steps to Proper Flossing:

THE FLOSSING CHALLENGE!

1) Floss for a week straight
2) Skip a day
3) Taste your mouth after the “no-floss-day”

BRUSHING

Your mouth consists of an upper and a lower arch of teeth.
Each arch has an inside, outside and chewing surfaces which must be cleaned of plaque.
1.) Start by dry brushing your lower front teeth on the tongue side, this has been shown to be the most effective method for this area of the mouth.
2.) Pick a corner of your mouth (e.g. back outside right) and continue from there.
3.) On the outside and inside of your arch there is only one area that needs attention. That area is between the teeth and gums. You need to only concentrate on cleaning this area since the other areas are self-cleansing.
4.) Place your toothbrush at a 45-degree angle between the teeth and gums, then gently vibrate to accomplish efficient plaque removal. Do not scrub your gums!
5.) Then turn the corner. (i.e. go from inside to outside) and use the same 45-degree angle technique on the inside of the arch.
6.) After you have brushed on the outside and inside of the arch you may scrub away at the biting surfaces to clean the grooves of the teeth. Now, repeat steps 4, 5, and 6 on the other arch.

7.) Brush your tongue, cheeks and palate. Congrats, you are done!
Note: If your tongue is coated, this is caused
by “dead taste buds”. Regular brushing and
gentle scraping of the tongue will improve
this situation, freshen your breath, and
enhance your sense of taste.

RECOMMENDED PRODUCTS

While a large variety of home care products are widely available to consumers, these are some of the brands we recommend using for your home care:
(A) TOOTH PASTE: Anything WITH fluoride
(B) TOOTHBRUSH: Soft Bristle Brush
(C) MOUTHWASH :Act or Fluorigard (Colgate)
(D) FLOSS: Glide (by Oral-B)

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