Hi, my name is Supa. My patients have been asking me a lot about how to brush their teeth better, and I promised them that I’ll put this video up on my website to show them a few tips on how they can do that better.

A lot of people ask me how to brush their teeth better, but no one asked me why are we doing that? Why are we brushing our teeth? That’s very important. The reason why we are brushing our teeth is to get rid of bacteria around your mouth. The next thing that you need to ask yourself is where are the bacteria? I’m going to show you this picture here inside the mouth. Now you can see here (0:49) that the bacteria tends to live around the gums. I’m going to go to the next slide, which show the plaque with the color (0:57). You can see it’s highlighted pretty well that all the bacteria tend to sit around the gum. Now it makes sense that when you’re brushing your teeth that you point the brush towards the gum to get rid of these bacteria.

Now we are going to show you the three common ways that I noticed a lot of my patients are brushing these ways and what’s the problem with them. Now, the first one. The three common methods I see my patients brush their teeth is do this side to side motion, up and down and also in a circular motion. Now you can see that people who are cleaning their teeth side to side like that concentrate a lot of brushing on their teeth. But you can see already that the bacteria tend to sit around the gum.

When you’re cleaning your teeth this way, there’s a chance that you’ll miss a lot of bacteria around the gum. If you have a look here when you’re brushing your teeth this way (1:56), it doesn’t go in between your teeth very well either. This aggressive scrubbing side to side has been known to cause a lot of damage to the gum as well. If I show you on the next picture (2:09), this is an example of the damage that happens from brushing aggressively. The first sign is that you’re getting gum recession around your teeth. If you continue scrubbing around your teeth that way, you can actually wear away the roots of your teeth as well.

The second way is that people are cleaning their teeth is up and down. Remember that around the gum and teeth there’s actually a pocket or a little dip in between the teeth and gum. When you’re brushing your teeth up and down, you are actually packing bacteria into the pocket. It’s the same as when you brush your teeth in a circular motion.

The next thing that I want to share with you are three tips on how to clean your teeth better. You already see that the bacteria are sitting around your gums here (3:08). When you’re brushing your teeth, you want to be pointing your brush at a 45 degree angle towards the gum. Just press right between gum and teeth. You can see that by pressing in between gum and teeth, that the brush is going in between your teeth really well (3:28). Then all you have to do is a gentle wiggle. This way, you put a little bit of pressure around your gum and press so that the brush doesn’t leave the spot and doesn’t cause any damage from aggressive brushing.

The second tip on how to brush your teeth better is to start from the back and finish at the back. Most of my patients tend to start brushing from the front and go towards the back of the mouth. Usually they’ll go as far back as they can. Most of the time they will hit the cheek on the inside of the mouth and will stop there. They’ll tend to miss the last few teeth in the mouth or possibly the second-to-last one as well. That’s why most of the people will tend to have more decay and gum disease towards the back of the mouth.

What I mentioned to you before is that you should see the teeth as one line starting from the back and finish at the back. When you open your mouth, the first thing you should be doing is getting your brush right behind your last tooth and then work your way around on the side towards the front, turn your brush around and then go towards the back and then start at the top. Same way from the back, finish at the back. This way you won’t miss anything.

Now just be aware that you’ve already been around your mouth once doing this circular motion. All you did was clean the outside of your teeth. Now if you have a look at your teeth here (5:14), you notice that each tooth has an outside surface, a top surface and and an inside surface. You should be cleaning around your mouth three times. The first time you’re just going to go around cleaning the outside. The second time is directly on the top of your teeth. This one is fine to just simply scrub on the top of the teeth coming around towards the front then the back and repeating for the other part of your teeth.

The third time when you’re going around your mouth, you should be cleaning the inside. It’s the same as cleaning the outside, just a little bit more difficult. Just be aware to try to keep the brush between gum and teeth. A common mistake is that I see a lot of patients brushing their teeth too high and you need to concentrate on the gum. Again, going around your mouth the third time, just on the inside. They are my three tips. Just remember, brush on a 45 degree angle to the gum, start from the back and finish at the back, then the third is to go around your mouth three times. Have a go with that and good luck.