Enhance your life : Blog title

Feb 23, 2011

Improve Oral Hygiene / Fight bad breath (3/9) - Tongue cleaning

Many people don´t know about the most powerful, yet very simple method to reduce bad breath: tongue cleaning.

If you´re currently not doing it, just take a look at the back of your tongue. Maybe you can see some disgusting white, or even worse, green, bad odor causing bacteria film.

The intend of tongue cleaning is to notably decrease, but not to completely remove this remainder. Normally the tip of your tongue should be clean by itself, if hast some self cleaning thingy going on. But at the back of the tongue, bacteria is merrily flourishing.

To effectively clean your tongue, you can use either your brush, a spoon or a toungue cleaner. Since the brush or spoon could cause a gag reflex I advice you to use a tongue cleaner. Those are speacially designed to reduce the gag reflex and really cheap to buy.

Those are the steps I take:

1) Clean the tongue after brushing teeth but before using mouthwash because the toothpaste will loosen the bacteria on the tongue, and the mouthwash will rinse it away.

2) Take 3 to 4 scrapes from back to the front and rinse the cleaner after each scrape.

3) Don´t apply to much pressure since that would irritate the tongue.

4) Always rinse the tongue cleaner with hot water before and after use.

Did you already know about tongue cleaning and are you doing it regularly?

Fight bad breath (2/9) - Flossing

Feb 16, 2011

Improve Oral Hygiene / Fight bad breath (2/9) - Flossing

There are a a lot of reasons why flossing is important, not the least of which is that it keeps your teeth and gums healthy. It can also prevent bad breath and keep your arteries healthy: Flossing the plaque from your teeth can help keep it from getting embedded in your arteries which COULD cause e.g. heart diseases or seizures and other diseases.

Some things to remember when flossing:

1) Floss at least once a day, it´s sufficient to remove any plaque buildup.

2) Take a moment to clean the sides of each tooth, the goal is to remove that nasty white plaque from between the teeth.

3) Use a new section of dental floss for each tooth because using the same inch of floss will just transfer the plaque from tooth to tooth.

4) If your teeth are close together, you may prefer waxed dental floss.

5) If your gums bleed, floss more gently and remember that regular flossing will make your gums more resilient and less likely to bleed.

6) After flossing, rinse your mouth.

If you´re already flossing, do you do it before or after you brush your teeth? I feel flossing first makes more sense, it seems logical to loosen all plaque and then brush the remainder away.

You can easily find some tutorials on how to floss properly on www.youtube.com

Fight bad breath (1/9) - Tooth brushing

Feb 11, 2011

Improve Oral Hygiene / Fight bad breath (1/9): Tooth brushing

Everyone knows: regularly brushing your teeth is vital. But how often should you do it? Many people just do it 'to have it done' and also often don´t know they have bad breath because of doing it 'now an then'.

Here are some tipps to brush your teeth:

1) Brush your teeth at least twice a day

2) Brush for at least 90 seconds, better 2 min. Move the brush in small circles from gumm to teeth and cover both the front and back surfaces.

3) Never leave the house in the morning without brushing your teeth. But also never brush your teeth 1 hour before or after you consumed acid foods (does a lot more bad than good to your teeth)

4) After brushing, rinse your mouth and wipe the toothpaste from your lips, can be embarrasing sometimes if you forget.

5) Always brush your teeth before bed at night. This is key, to not develop a bad breath during night (production of saliva stops overnight, bacterias have no limits to replicate themselves)

6) Electric toothbrushes are better than normal ones, but you still have to use it for >90 sec.

7) Your toothbrush can be a bacterial breeding ground, so change it every 2-3 months and clean it with hot water after using it

Do you brush your teeth on a regular basis?

Fight bad breath (2/9) - Flossing