Are you using too much toothpaste?
The perfect dose of fluoride is key to children as they are growing. Dentists recommend fluoride-based toothpaste. This is because fluoride helps prevent cavities in two different ways.
It concentrates in the growing bones and developing teeth of children, helping to harden the enamel on baby and adult teeth before they emerge. It also helps to set the enamel on adult teeth that have already emerged. For adults, the fluoride works during the demineralisation and remineralisation processes that naturally occur in your mouth.
After you eat, your saliva contains acids that can cause demineralisation, a dissolving of the calcium and phosphorus under the tooth's surface. At other times when your saliva is less acidic, it does just the opposite, replenishing the calcium and phosphorus that keep your teeth hard.
Just the right amount
Let's face it since most of us were young; we all imagine toothpaste bathing the bristles of a toothbrush when someone mentions the word 'toothpaste'.
Admittedly consumer marketing has ingrained that image of the toothbrush bristles covered in paste, forming the shape of a wave. We can see it on our TV adverts, billboards and even social media feed.
Even as dentists, we advised pea-sized amounts of toothpaste. We rarely see images of pea-sized amounts of paste. It is really hard to get right- a pea size amount to one person is not necessarily pea to another- it is incredibly subjective.
Perhaps people are mimicking toothpaste amounts they see on TV or just using too much by accident. Certainly, the squeezy traditional toothpaste tubes can eject too much paste.
Does size matter?
This process is caused by remineralisation. When fluoride is present during remineralisation, the minerals deposited are harder than they would otherwise be, helping to strengthen your teeth and prevent dissolution during the next demineralisation phase.
The usual dose to keep the teeth healthy is 1450ppm however, it may vary in some instances, for example, those prone to tooth decay may need more.
That is why we love Pärla as it is the perfect dose of fluoride to help prevent tooth decay. Moreover, it helps with waste. With regular toothpaste -you don't need that much, so you're wasting the actual toothpaste.
Importantly the faster you use up the toothpaste tube, the sooner you need a new one, sending the old tube straight to a landfill.
Want to hear something scary?
Toothpaste tubes take 500 years to decompose, so every single toothpaste tube you have ever used exists somewhere on the planet in a landfill or the ocean.
So let's make that one small change daily and switch from tubes to tablets. After all, you will get the perfect dose of fluoride- never too much or too little and help save the planet at the same time. .
