Brushing your teeth is a daily task, and picking the right dental appliances is something you do when you visit the supermarket and online shops or stock up. Choosing dental appliances sounds straightforward but can be more of a blind spot. Well-chosen tools can make your whole family's oral health more effective, poor choices, waste money not to mention, will also become a drag on oral health.

Oral care tools, the most important a toothbrushes, toothpaste, and a class of teeth between the cleaning, such as dental floss, rinse, and interdental brush. Let's start by cleaning up the blind spots of toothbrushes and toothpaste.

The four-letter rule for choosing a toothbrush

With toothbrushes, there are two common choices: regular toothbrushes or electric toothbrushes, which is better? If you have mastered the brushing method introduced earlier, there is no difference in the cleaning effect between an ordinary toothbrush and an electric toothbrush.

Comparatively speaking, ordinary toothbrushes are suitable for a wider range; so let's start with this one. Before the baby is 6 months old, new parents can choose to use gauze to clean the mouth. After 6 months when the milk teeth erupt, you can choose a suitable finger brush to clean the baby's mouth. From the age of 2, until the day you still have teeth, the toothbrush will be with you lifelong.

How do you choose this essential tool? To sum up, four words are enough: small, short, medium, and change.

‘Small’ means choosing a toothbrush with a small head so that you can easily reach every tooth surface. For most adults, a brush head that is 1.3cm wide and 2.5cm high is appropriate. It is not recommended to have a large brush head, as it may feel like you are brushing many teeth at once, but in fact, you are not brushing any of them properly.

As for the shape of the bristles, there are a lot of choices on the market: flat, wavy, cross, tapered tips... From the effect of removing plaque, there is not much difference, as long as the brush head is small and can be very good to clean the teeth of all surfaces, so do not pay too much attention to this factor.

The third word is ‘medium’, which means the bristles should be medium soft. Studies have shown that the medium is the best for cleaning. Plaque grows on the teeth and sticks so well that requires firm brushing. If the bristles are too soft, they don't work to clean, and the sponge bristles trending online are too soft.

You might be worried that firm bristles harm gums. When I was a kid, my mum always told me to choose a toothbrush with soft bristles too. But, if the bristles damage your gums, it must be the way you brush your teeth that's wrong, not the toothbrush.

What is the right amount of hardness? You can gently press the bristles on the back of your hand. A brush with moderate hardness that is neither seriously deformed nor rounded at the top of the bristles and has no obvious stinging sensation, will do.

However, for these selected tools, we use the toothbrush there is a word, ‘change’, which is also the most important of the four words. The second and more important reason is that toothbrushes are exposed to so many oral bacteria every day that even if the bristles look new, they are still a breeding ground for bacteria. Some studies have even found that toothbrushes used beyond six months have a higher average bacterial content than the floor of your home.

To repeat, let's remember these four words when choosing a toothbrush: small, short, medium, and replacement. If you're choosing a toothbrush for your child, the emphasis is still on these words, except that the brush head should be smaller, with the national regulation being no longer than 2.9cm. Of course, you are unlikely to bring a ruler to buy; estimate by comparing it to 2-3 front teeth, and the width of the bristles of about no more than 4 rows. As your child's teeth are smaller, the bristles can be thinner to allow them to penetrate deeper into the teeth.