Another comment that me as a dentist gets asked a lot by my patients is that what type of toothbrush should I be using? Now this one is very simple. When it comes to choosing your toothbrush, there’s only one rule, and that’s to pick a soft toothbrush. With toothbrush that you can find in supermarkets or chemists, that comes in different stiffness. Usually it’s soft, medium, or hard. If you refer to my previous videos about brushing your teeth, you’ll realize that using hard toothbrush or aggressively brushing, especially around the gum, can cause a lot of gum damage. And if not, also wear down the root surface of your teeth. So, with the toothbrush, always pick a soft one, and picking a hard toothbrush is a no-no. To be honest, the last time I’ve had a look in the supermarkets, I can’t even find a hard toothbrush anymore. What I’ve got here is the soft toothbrush as well as a medium toothbrush. Let’s have a look and see what’s the difference.

Even when you’re comparing the medium toothbrush to a soft toothbrush, there’s definitely a different feel to it. The soft toothbrush is a lot gentler on the gum and if you’ve never had a chance to try the soft toothbrush, definitely do give it a go. So now that we established that we definitely want to pick a soft toothbrush for general use, let’s have a look at some other special type of toothbrush that can help you clean around your teeth.

As a dentist, I find that most of my patients are struggling to clean very well on the inside of the lower front teeth, as well as behind the last teeth at the back here. And that’s quite understandable because for someone to be cleaning really well behind the lower front teeth, they have to tilt their toothbrush really higher up like this (2:01). And that’s not always the easiest thing to do. What I’ve thought is a way of a way to help my patients, and that’s what we call a bended toothbrush (2:13).

And that’s very simple. You can see that this is exactly the same toothbrush. What you can do is that you can dip one of these toothbrushes in the bowl of boiling water and then slowly press it as the toothbrush heats up, and that will bend the toothbrush into something like that. Once you’ve done that, it’s a lot easier to get some access behind the lower front teeth. With this particular one, because it’s a rubber type, it’s a little bit harder to bend the toothbrush. Something like these plastic ones, it’s a lot easier to bend it in the hot water.

Now, for many, many years, I’ve told my patients to give it a go with bending their own toothbrush like this. But recently I found out that there’s a company that’s called Piksters, that they come up with what we call the Reverse Focus toothbrush, which have this bend in it. This way, you’re still able to clean the back of your teeth if you’re not going to bend the other toothbrush yourself, you can get one of these (3:22). And it gives you a lot of access to clean behind your lower front teeth. And having said that, you can see the difference between the bended toothbrush as well as a Reverse Focus toothbrush, as well that it has a much steeper angle than what you can normally bend with a normal toothbrush. If you are someone who’s struggling to clean behind these lower front teeth, do give this toothbrush a go. It could certainly help getting access to behind your lower front teeth here.

The takeaway message for this video is that one, you definitely want to use the soft toothbrush and by and large, that’s all you’re ever going to need. If you’re struggling in those hard to get to area, do give the bended toothbrush or the Reverse Focus toothbrush a go. So hopefully the information in this video has been useful and we’ll see you next time.