A dentist has taken to TikTok to explain that many of us have been using mouthwash wrong all this time.
Anna Peterson, who posts on the platform under the username annapetersondental, shared a few videos explaining why we should not use mouthwash after we brush our teeth.
In one videoAnna simply said: ‘Using mouthwash after brushing your teeth is going to give you tooth decay. So stop doing it.’
For those needing more information after what was, for them, a dental hygiene bombshell, Anna added a second video in which she explained: ‘Your toothpaste that you brush your teeth with has around 1450pp fluoride.
‘Your mouthwash has only 220pp fluoride. This is a much lower concentration, and it’s not enough to protect your teeth from sugars that you’re going to eat and drink.
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‘So when you brush your teeth, and then you rinse with mouthwash straight away, you just rinse off all the high concentration fluoride for a very low concentration fluoride.’
She added: ‘By no means am I against mouthwash, because I actually do recommend it to my patients.
‘But not every patient needs it, and I certainly don’t tell them to use it after brushing.’
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In a third video, Anna went on to suggest using mouthwash immediately after eating a meal.
She explains that ‘pretty much anything’ we eat contains some type of sugar, which make our mouths acidic and our teeth ‘start to dissolve’.
‘This is called an acid attack,’ she said
‘Now if you were to go and brush your teeth at this point, what’s happening is you’re brushing the acid into your tooth.
‘This causes tooth erosion. To get your teeth out of this critical zone, use mouthwash.’
When asked his thoughts on mouthwash, Mehy Lo Presti, Restorative and Aesthetic Dentist at The Kensington Dentist agrees that using mouthwash right after brushing your teeth isn’t the best way forward.
‘If you are using fluoride toothpaste, you don’t want to use the mouthwash afterward, otherwise, it would wash away the concentrated fluoride that the toothpaste left in your teeth,’ he tells Metro.co.uk.
He explains: ‘The use of conventional mouthwashes is generally not recommended unless there is a specific reason to do that, like a post-surgery or a physical inability to brush your teeth. Although, mouthwash doesn’t substitute brushing and flossing your teeth.’
‘If possible,’ he adds, ‘you shouldn’t even rinse with water, to keep the fluoride working in your mouth.
‘I personally like coconut oil pulling in the mornings for five to 15 minutes before brushing my teeth. It’s a natural resource and there’s some research finding benefits as anti-bacterial and anti-inflammatory.’
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