Rinsing Your Teeth After Brushing Them Can Cause Cavities, According to a Specialist

Brushing our teeth is one of the rituals we repeat the most throughout our lives, most of the time without even noticing that we are doing it automatically. But that doesn’t mean that there aren’t better (or worse) ways of doing it. For instance, there are things we do when brushing our teeth that could end up causing cavities.

That got the Bright Side thinking about what we normally do when brushing our teeth, so we thought it’d be a good idea to write an article about this study. After all, it’s so normal to eat, brush, and rinse your teeth, that we might not even realize we’re doing it wrong!

Fluoride is the heart and soul of your toothpaste.

This amazing invention, meant to be used daily, is a product that contains a combination of ingredients, the most important of which is fluoride. That’s because its function is to protect the tooth enamel from bacteria, which cause infectious diseases like cavities. These bacteria could cause the deterioration of your teeth. In other words, the use of toothpaste in your dental hygiene can reduce the risk of cavities by around 25% to 45%, to be precise.

But how long you brush your teeth can also have an impact on cavities.

Sadly, most people brush their teeth for just around 45 to 70 seconds. This might be related to the fast pace in which we are forced to lead our modern lives. However, the Scottish Dental Clinical Effectiveness Programme (SDCEP) recommends brushing your teeth for about 2 minutes to prevent tooth decay and other oral hygiene-related diseases.

Rinsing too much can damage your teeth.

While you might think it’s a great idea to remove all traces of toothpaste from your teeth after brushing, thorough rinsing is actually not the way to go. Or at least that’s what Dr. Clement Seeballuck, Clinical Lecturer in Pediatric Dentistry at the University of Dundee, revealed in a study. According to him, it’s better to just spit out the residue, since over-rinsing can wash the fluoride from your toothpaste off of your teeth, making the protection it offers less effective.

Brushing at night is more important than you think.

In the same study, Dr. Seeballuk also said that brushing your teeth at night is extremely important. That’s because while we sleep, we don’t generate the same amount of saliva as when we’re awake. Because of this, our mouth does not eliminate the residues that feed the bacteria capable of causing tooth decay with the same ease. It’s for this reason that doctors often recommend that we not eat food after brushing our teeth.

Less sugar equals fewer cavities.

In addition to proper technique, the WHO suggests reducing the consumption of additives and sugar in food to less than 10% of your daily calories. According to them, this can help us take better care of our teeth. The consumption of entire fruits is recommended over processed juices or drinks, since the bacteria that cause tooth decay feed on these sugars.

How many times a day do you brush your teeth? Do you think you should change something in your oral hygiene routine? Let us know in the comments.