Brushing Your Teeth Properly - 3 Major Tips

August 27, 2024

Brushing may seem like a simple task, but it's essential for preventing cavities and keeping your smile bright. Over time, poor brushing habits can become second nature, and you may not even realize that your technique needs improvement. There's always room to refine how we brush to make our smiles shine. NewSmile is here to help, offering guidance on proper brushing techniques and introducing you to methods you may not have encountered before.

The Basics

How you brush your teeth might seem intuitive and something that should be easy. However, too often you get into a rut as you brush your teeth and forget or simply neglect the most important and basic things. That is why reevaluating how you brush your teeth is always important. Here are some of the very basic things that need to happen when you brush.

It might seem like a no-brainer, but when you brush you need to clean every surface of your teeth, especially focusing on the surfaces where you do most of your chewing. The most common recommended amount of time you should take to brush your teeth is two full minutes. That’s a full ten seconds longer than “Fell in Love With a Girl” the hit song from The White Stripes. It might be daring to say, but it seems like most adults are guilty of never reaching the two-minute mark. Colgate even recommends using a stopwatch so that you can get a sense of exactly how long one hundred and twenty seconds is.

How to Hold Your Brush

When you brush your teeth you should be holding your toothbrush at a forty-five-degree angle to your gums. This is so that you can properly clean both your gums and your teeth. Brushing your gums keeps them healthy and helps to avoid gingivitis.

To reach the inside surfaces of your front teeth you will need to tilt your brush vertically so that all those surfaces will get properly cleaned.

Holding your toothbrush in a fist might seem natural, but it might not actually be the best for your teeth. For those of us who have sensitive gums, or gums that inflame easily, it is best to hold your toothbrush with your fingertips. This results in a softer brushing stroke and is kinder to your sensitive gums. Holding your toothbrush this way also helps you be more conscious of your brushing and helps prevent you from going into autopilot.

Brushing Technique

To properly clean your teeth, short and gentle back and forth strokes are the way to go. Each of these strokes should be, as the American Dental Association describes, “tooth-wide” strokes so that you are making sure to clean the whole tooth as you perform this brush for each of your teeth. Whether you are cleaning the front or the inside surfaces of your teeth, this is the stroke to go with.

Things to Remember

Okay, now that we’ve reviewed how to hold your toothbrush and the proper brushing techniques, here are some of the things that most adults forget while brushing:

• Brush your tongue. When you have finished brushing your teeth for the full two minutes, don’t forget to gently brush your tongue. Brushing your tongue helps to remove bacteria that camps out there and it will also help to freshen your breath.
• Remember to brush twice a day. It might seem silly to brush your teeth in the morning after you brushed your teeth before going to bed. However, when you are sleeping bacteria gets to hang out and run amok without any disturbance. Brushing in the morning is vital to avoiding cavities.
• Don’t forget to floss at least once a day. Flossing is the final step in taking proper care of your teeth. It ensures that you are reaching all of your teeth’s surfaces and keeping them clean.

While you are improving how you brush your teeth and are learning new ways to take care of your teeth, why not make it the best smile that you can? Get NewSmile's teeth straightening aligners today so that you will have the cleanest and the best smile around.

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