Your toothbrush: what you need to know in 2021
What’s important in oral-care, as summarised by Curaden.
Oral care products have come a long way – from chewing sticks to high-tech ultrasonic devices. If you look at modern oral care technologies, you’ll be amazed at how powerful and empowering these tools have become, and how much of a difference a properly selected tool can make in your life today.
We explored the most relevant information in oral care to determine what is the most important for the health-conscious reader.
The most important thing in any toothbrush
Today, we know that a toothbrush – whether manual or electric – needs soft and gentle high-density bristles.
Bristles are the tiny fibres at the end of your brush. If they are hard, they can damage your teeth. If they are soft, they cause no damage – plus, they can reach into tighter and harder-to-reach spaces.
Soft and dense bristles combined with the proper brushing technique will significantly improve your oral health in the long term. The density of bristles is also important because toothbrushes are mostly about a mechanical action, so the more things happening as you brush, the better.
For example, if you brush at a speed of between two and six brush strokes per second, two minutes of brushing will result in approximately 400-500 strokes. With a regular low-density hard brush, this gives around 350,000 cleaning actions. If you take a brush that’s a little more dense, you can get up to 1 million cleaning actions per brushing.
With a dense soft toothbrush (like the CURAPROX CS 5460), one brushing will give you up to 2.5 million cleaning actions, which is up to eight times more efficient than a regular over-the-counter low-density brush. Just by increasing the bristle count, you multiply the number of cleaning actions on your teeth.
Do I need an electric toothbrush? Or is a simple high-density soft brush enough?
Basically, good oral health can be maintained with a soft manual toothbrush, a proper brushing technique and an interdental brush. However, the tech-savvy users and the most health-conscious people can consider an electric toothbrush as the way to go: a combination of a well-designed electric brush and daily interdental brushing can be a breakthrough for many people.
Studies showed that sonic toothbrushes clean up to 10% better than the manual brush, and with the best devices out there, you can get up to 42,000 brush strokes per minute.
CURAPROX Hydrosonic PRO is a lightweight and powerful toothbrush with an ergonomic handle and brush head to ensure perfect accessibility and a firm grip. Unlike rotating brush heads, Hydrosonic PRO uses a simple vertical to-and-from movement. Such movement is more gentle to your gums and provides additional hydrodynamic effects.
If the brush head has the right tilt, the bristles are soft and the motor is versatile enough, you can create an unmatched brushing experience.
This efficiency is particularly useful for people who for any reason are limited in executing fine brushing movements. Less physical movements are needed while brushing, and the results will still be exceptional.
People wearing braces also find that an electric toothbrush saves them a lot of work cleaning the braces and the spaces around them. However, with braces you need to pick out specific brush heads for your electric toothbrush: ones that work best with the elevated shape of the braces.
CURAPROX Hydrosonic PRO already comes packaged with a proper set of heads designed for cleaning braces, as well as implants, and there are refills available for order.
How fast electric brushes need to go
Electric brushes typically deliver between roughly 1,000 and 40,000 strokes (or pulses) per minute, depending on the manufacturer and model. Don’t be surprised by the range – many electric brushes operate across many speeds.
At lower speeds, below roughly 30,000, a brush provides a solid efficient mechanical action that is good for the physical cleaning of surfaces. The precise speed is not that important; the wide range is merely designed for you to pick the speed that feels the best for you. Above roughly 30,000 strokes or pulses, a toothbrush can create vibrations that activate the mixture of saliva and your toothpaste.
This activated compound becomes more efficient and reaches smaller spaces, including the outer parts of your interdental spaces. At CURAPROX, this process is called hydrodynamic effect, or hydrosonic brushing.
The hydrosonic process is the next level of proper brushing and largely increases its efficiency, so investing in a hydrosonic toothbrush is good advice for the particularly health-conscious.