Choosing a Toothbrush: Dental Care & Oral Hygiene

Video Transcript

"Hi my name is Carol and I am a registered dental hygienist and I will be speaking on behalf of Expert Village. In this clip we will be talking about how to choose a toothbrush. Whenever you go to the dental office you will notice there are many different choices and sometimes it can get kind of confusing on what toothbrush to choose from. I will give you a little bit of advice of which ones I would recommend. Whenever looking for a toothbrush, they have several different choices to choose from. You can choose a soft, medium or hard bristle toothbrush. I would recommend always going with a soft or extra soft bristle. The hard bristle toothbrush tends to be more damaging on the gums and causing problems if patients tend to brush too hard. So always go with a soft or extra soft. How you know what toothbrush you are choosing is by the label at the top of the toothbrush. On the soft bristle toothbrushes, you will notice that they are very soft in the different angles of them and when choosing them it is always good to get one that is a little bit higher on the tail of the toothbrush here and a little bit lower in the center. That way whenever you use the toe of the toothbrush on the front teeth it gets those areas a little bit easier. You also want to look at handle size. Some patients need a little bit bigger handle for an easier grasp and some patients don’t need so. Look for the comfort of the handle. Also you want to look for the head size on the toothbrush. You want to pick the size toothbrush for your size mouth. If you have a small mouth, you don’t want too large of a toothbrush. On toothbrushes it is always important to replace your toothbrush every 3 months and on some toothbrushes they have little indicators like this one does the color bristles and after 3 months those bristles begin to fade so you know when to change out your toothbrush. An example of an extra soft bristle toothbrush would be this one. You notice on this one compared to the other the bristles are very soft. This would be more recommended for our gum disease patients. This is a little gentler on the gums. Another example of a toothbrush would be the electric toothbrush. This is great for any patient because the electric toothbrushes are all times at 2 minutes so that you know exactly how long to brush for and they also keep the patients from brushing their teeth too hard. A lot of the electric toothbrushes have different settings on them like this one. Just a regular soft, softer mode and also a massaging mode that helps the patient get between their teeth a little bit better. All these electric toothbrushes come with detachable heads so that after 3 months you can replace the head with a new one. "