The electric toothbrush was first introduced in the United States in the 1950’s. While a plain toothbrush works just fine for cleaning your teeth and applying fluoride to your enamel, the electric toothbrush does have two benefits. These benefits both lead to greater health for your teeth and gums. We believe our Placerville dental patients may be interested in these advantages.
The First Benefit
Many electric toothbrushes have a timer so that they brush your teeth for exactly two minutes. That’s actually much longer than the average amount of time most people clean their teeth with a manual toothbrush. So electric toothbrushes tend to encourage longer periods of toothbrushing, which leads to more removal of plaque, food remnants and bacteria.
The Second Benefit
An electric toothbrush simply provides far more brushing than you can accomplish on your own, due to its oscillating action. So when you combine the time factor with the number of brushstrokes, you end up with more cleaning being accomplished.
What Do the Scientists Say?
The Cochrane Oral Health Group conducted a review of electric toothbrush studies in 2005. Researchers considered 29 different studies with more than 2500 patients. Two things were made clear:
- Electric toothbrushes provide a modest benefit in plaque reduction, which improved the health of the gums.
- The best benefits came from using electric brushes with a rotation oscillation action.
Many electric toothbrushes use a simple oscillation that mimics human toothbrushing technique. The preferred action is rotation oscillation, meaning the brushes spin in circles. Multiple studies found this action to work the best, although all the brushes tested created at least mild improvements.
The Ultimate Lesson About Brushing Your Teeth
No matter how expensive your toothbrush, if you don’t use it, it doesn’t clean your teeth. Regularly brushing your teeth is the first step in preventing gum disease, dental decay and higher costs at the dentist. If you don’t want to spend the extra dollars necessary to buy an electric toothbrush, be confident that your manual toothbrush still works just fine and will lead to acceptable oral hygiene, but only if you put it to work! Believe us when we tell you, at the Placerville Dental Group, we can see the difference!
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