Cleaning your teeth & gums

The Just Smile Dental Team are here to advise you how to care for your teeth and gums to help you avoid injury and infection. Our aim is to help you to maintain the health and full function of your dentition for the whole of your life.

At Just Smile we are frequently asked by our patients as to how they can improve their own home care. The most important aspect of oral hygiene is regular and efficient cleaning. Most people would not go longer than a day without the most common form of cleaning - brushing. However, most people do not even consider flossing or any other form of cleaning between the teeth!!

Many of our patients are horrified that plaque debris and scale accumulates so rapidly on their teeth, despite their best endeavours to remove it. Often it seems to return within a few days even of a professional scale and polish at the Dental Centre.

At Just Smile we advise a few tools to help to achieve the standards of home care necessary to prevent the onset of periodontal diseases. Frequently the efficient use of these tools requires spending a little more time every day to clean out the debris that collects around the gum tissue with particular attention to the areas between the teeth.

Tools and aids to achieve great tooth cleaning.

Toothbrushes

The right selection of brush is critically important.

Tired of brushing manually?

Electric Toothbrushes

Of all the really useful tools available to help you remove all the debris that collects in your mouth the most effective item is the electric tooth brush. There are a number available with a range of different prices.

At Just Smile we predominantly recommend the Philips Sonicare, a sonic toothbrush, to our patients. The Sonicare toothbrush is by far the most sophisticated electric toothbrush that we have seen. It originated in the USA and is now available in the UK. The results that are obtained with Sonicare are outstanding.

There has been increasing interest in Sonicare following articles in the press, particularly the Daily Mail Newspaper.

The bristles of the Sonicare sonic toothbrush move from side to side creating ultrasonic waves to break up debris and remove it similar to the equipment that we use at Just Smile.

You can buy Philip’s Sonicare toothbrushes at a very competitive prices from our dental shop.

Interdental cleaning.

Effective cleaning is only achieved when coupled with an effective form of interdental cleaning between the teeth.

Normal, healthy, gum tissue should fill the space under the contact points of adjacent teeth. This gum tissue is designed to protect the area between teeth. If the teeth become displaced or rotated the gum seal may become compromised and disease may result between the teeth. The slightly wider gum area between back teeth is particularly prone to disease. Many people never clean these areas of the gum with either floss or interdental brushes. If allowed to continue unchecked periodontal disease in these areas result in loss of the bone designed to support the teeth

There are many aids to interdental cleaning but here is a summary of the ones frequently recommended at Just Smile.

Interdental brushes.

There are two types of these brushes either a tufted or spiral wound brush.

Both of these brush types must be used gently as any excessive pressure may cause injury and damage to the gum.

Other forms of interdental cleaning

Dental Floss

This is the most well known aid to interdental cleaning and takes numerous forms
from woven Ultrafloss to thin Teflon coated floss. Dental floss is now also available impregnated with fluoride to strengthen the tooth surfaces and chlorhexadine gluconate which is an antibacterial. By this method fluoride and chlorhexidine gluconate can be deposited at the difficult to reach contact areas of adjacent teeth that are particularly prone to decay. In our opinion Floss cannot achieve as good a result as spiral wound brushes.

Superfloss

This floss is specifically designed to successfully clean under bridgework. Lengths of superfloss are divided into three different sections. Firstly a stiff end to help thread under the bridge until you reach the fluffier, woven section for cleaning between the underside of the bridge and the gum. The final section is standard floss which may be used between teeth in the usual manner.

Woodpoints

Woodpoints (Interdens) have some limited use but are really dental massage sticks that stimulate blood flow through the gum around the tooth margins. Their use for the removal of food debris seems to be of relatively limited value quite often packing the food into the contact areas rather than removing it.

Toothpaste

Most toothpastes contain Fluoride, which when incorporated within the tooth surface makes the tooth more resistant to decay.

An increasing number of toothpastes also contain chemicals that alter the makeup of the bacteria in the mouth. The bacteria are highly specialised organisms and have a special cell wall that is resistant to fluids and chemicals found in the mouth. By adding chemicals to toothpastes that alter bacterial cell walls, and interfere with how the bacteria attach to the plaque layer, it is now possible to increase the effective cleaning potential by manual and mechanical brushing. Since bacteria also depend on sugars to breed and survive, the addition of chemically altered sugars denies bacteria their essential food.

Mouthwashes

Mouth washes too, contain many of the chemicals found in toothpastes, so that some rinses are used before brushing and cleaning, to chemically loosen the attachment of bacteria to the tooth surface. Other mouthwashes are used after brushing to increase the fluoride levels of the tooth surface and reduce the number of bacteria present in the mouth.