A trip to the grocery store or drug store will make it obvious that there are dozens of toothpaste brands on the market these days. How are we supposed to choose between tartar control, fluoride, whitening, fresh mint, anti-cavity, gel, paste, baking soda, breath-freshening, and all the other fun features promised on the toothpaste boxes? Even dentists can get intimidated by the wide array of choices of toothpaste on the store shelves. It is hard for us to get up the new toothpaste so don’t feel bad if we have not heard of it. The manufacturers will occasionally send us samples to try out.
If you are concerned about your oral health, you probably have wondered: “What brand of toothpaste is the best? What variety of toothpaste should I use?”
Here are a few bits of advice for choosing (and using) toothpaste:
1) Don’t buy into brand names. First of all, there is no “best” brand of toothpaste. Most of the toothpaste on the market contain the American Dental Association’s recommended ingredients. If you have a favorite brand of toothpaste, then feel free to buy it – if you like the flavor or consistency or if you have had a reliably good experience, then feel free to continue. Don’t worry about finding the “best” brand of toothpaste, because for the most part, it doesn’t matter which brand you use.
2) Find the fluoride. There are tons of different options in toothpaste. It seems like every single package is proclaiming a different and more unique combination of ingredients (“Tartar Control/Anti-Cavity with Baking Soda and Sparkling Mint Crystals!”) WOW!! One thing you should definitely look for is fluoride. This is one of the most important elements in preventing tooth decay – if you brush with fluoride toothpaste twice a day, you will be ahead of the game.
3) Less is more. TV commercials have taught us that you need to squeeze a long, looping strand of toothpaste onto your brush, right? Wrong, you actually don’t need to use very much toothpaste – only about a pea-sized portion will do and you save yourself having to clean your sink of that extra piece of toothpaste that never gets used.
4) Brush longer, spit later. The way you brush your teeth is more important than the toothpaste you use. You need to brush your teeth for about 2 minutes. If you brush for less than 2 minutes, you are not giving your teeth the full benefits of brushing - and if you spit out the toothpaste too soon, that helpful fluoride and bacteria scrubbing foam is not going where it needs to be.
