What dental paste should I use to clean my teeth?
The tooth paste you use to clean your teeth with, has several functions so understanding what these are will help you make an informed purchase of dental paste in the future.
Firstly the paste is applied to a good brush in a small amount. When the correct brushing technique is used, the paste should be able to remove generalised soft plaque and reduce the bacterial load found across your unbrushed teeth.
The paste has several important components to help you achieve smooth and clean teeth on completion of brushing. The main cleaning element in paste is the finely ground particles that abrade off plaque and light calculus produced by the millions of bacteria found in our mouths. Different pastes have different hardness of abrasive particles and if not controlled for size during maunfacturing may not be doing the job we are expecting.
The bacteria eat what we eat, then leave their waste on our teeth and gums as a film of sludge. This sludge or plaque can become calcified by our saliva and food if not removed daily and that harder deposit ( ie calculus) may require a trip to the dentist to remove.
Another component in the paste is a detergent that helps emulsify the plaque to make it easier to rinse the tooth clean. The wetting affect of the detergent means the plaque will break up more easily and destroy the resident bacteria.
The next problem the paste deals with is this "sludge" has an acid present that is capable of dissolving the enamel on our teeth. If not removed frequently, it eventually creates a hole or cavity. Should the bacteria have been present for any length of time on a tooth, it is likely that some demineralisation of the enamel has already started to take place. This happens when bacteria that are residing on all surfaces of your teeth, deposit their acid waste. This contacts tooth enamel, and it begins to disssolve or demineralise. In order to neutralise this affect of the acid, the paste has a chemical to balance the acidic affect. Saliva has neutralising chemicals also so there is no need for alarm that the paste may be bad for us as it is mimicking the environment already present in our mouths.
The other important component in paste is the naturally occurring element Fluoride. Fluoride is so valuable in protecting tooth enamel that most governments have added it to the water supply. By drinking tap water we get a mini fluoride treatment daily. This added to fluoridated dental paste and used daily is the best way to prevent new cavities forming so it saves us all money.