Writing this in the shadow of the festive season, I thought that it would be a good time to call upon the experts. What experts? Expert dental advice on better ways you can care for your teeth. Teeth and gums! I mean, we have all been lovingly conditioned by our parents about the basics, hopefully anyway. Plus, dentists over our lifetime have, I am sure, reminded us about maintaining oral hygiene. However, the more you delve deeply into a topic the clearer a picture emerges, including those helpful nuances. So, let us begin.

Helpful Oral Care Tips From Dental Experts

Listen to this sage piece of dental wisdom from a fancy dentist working out of private clinics in London.

“We can’t avoid sugar in modern diets – it is hidden everywhere,” says Tristan Roberts. “The only reason we have tooth decay is because of sugar.” It is striking, says Roberts, that when we look at teeth in prehistoric skulls, there is hardly any sign of decay – and yet there weren’t dentists and fillings back then. “As soon as we started introducing refined sugars into the diet, decay exploded. Sugar itself doesn’t cause decay but it causes bacteria in the mouth to go crazy: they eat the sugar and release lots of acid.”
– The Guardian

There, you have heard it from the horse’s mouth – it is there before you in black and white. Sugar is the culprit, no messing about, straight in like a poke with a dental probe in your oral cavity. So, if we know this and have known this for a pretty long time, why have we not done something about it? Could it be the sugar lobby? Could it be those manufacturers of sugary drinks and sweeties? Something to ponder upon folks. You know if you look back upon the golden age of the beginnings of global trade by the Dutch and British back in the 16C and 17C you will see sugar, tobacco, and slavery right up there at the top. These were the things that bolstered their economies and really put them on the map. All three have been proven to be unhealthy and bad for humanity. Sugar is the last to be held accountable and there is still someway to go on that score.

Refrain From Constant Snacking Throughout The Day

Expert dental advice on better ways you can care for your teeth. The shared consensus among dentists, is that too many people snack too often on unhealthy and sugary substances. Ask yourself why you need to always have something in your mouth? What is it with this oral fixation? Asking yourself the tough questions might just save you from diabetes and shelling out a fortune for dental work to fix caries. It is not healthy to be snacking all the time. Most of us eat too much full stop. Is it boredom? Anxiety? Loneliness? In the meantime, make sure that you rinse your mouth with water or chew sugar free gum if you have to. This, after snacking, will lower the acidic load on your teeth. You have to remember that human beings did not, originally, snack all the time, rather they struggled to find enough food to survive. Thus, our teeth and gums are not designed to cope with the volume of food and sugary food in particular. This is why our teeth are not up to the job in the current era and many of us experience so much toothache and eventual loss of teeth. Our sugar infested diets do not fit with our evolutionary design. Sad but true, I am afraid folks.

Electric Tooth Brushes Are Better, According To The Experts

I was a little surprised at this tip but I shouldn’t really be in this age of technology. ‘Machines do it better’, perhaps, should be tattooed on our foreheads in the 21C. I mean, AI this and AI that, it makes you sick to your back teeth. Dental experts reckon that we are more likely to get better brushing from an electric toothbrush because they are not reliant on our own unreliable input and effort. Golly gosh, it can be a tad depressing reviewing the human race sometimes. Although, there are some mighty super duper expensive sensor driven electric toothbrushes out there the advice is that a half decent one will do. Don’t bother breaking the bank unless you really want to.

Brushing Up On Times

So what is 2025’s best dental advice on ways you can care for your teeth? Apparently, brushing our teeth twice a day is still sufficient, as my dear old mum used to plead with me to do. Morning and last thing at night. It is the fluoride benefit from first thing in the morning, which can protect your teeth all day. Likewise, last thing at night, because we have saliva issues during the night, as we sleep and need extra protection from bad bacteria getting up to all sorts of trouble around our teeth. Snorers and sufferers from sleep apnoea will know about dry mouth. Crucial piece of important advice here, avoid dry mouth, as much as possible to reduce infection and tooth decay. Sip pure water throughout the day; and I always have a glass of water by my bedside – which does not contain my dentures, as yet. Saliva saves the day when it comes to healthy oral hygiene. Use a fluoride toothpaste, obviously.

Is Fluoride Dangerous, As Some Folk Say?

What do they say about a little bit of knowledge being a dangerous thing. I find this to be the case with alarmist folk who might know the name of a chemical and what it can do if found in large amounts in the human body. However, they do not bother to do the harder work of digging deeper into things like safe levels and the volumes involved. The fear of fluoride social media outrage campaigns feed on this kind of ignorance.

“Opposition to fluoridation has existed since its initiation in the 1940s. During the 1950s and 1960s, now-debunked conspiracy theorists claimed that fluoridation was a communist plot to undermine American public health. In recent years, water fluoridation has become a prevalent health and political issue in many countries, resulting in some countries and communities discontinuing its use while others have expanded it. The controversy is propelled by a significant public opposition supported by a minority of professionals, which include researchers, dental and medical professionals, alternative medical practitioners, health food enthusiasts, a few religious groups (mostly Christian Scientists in the U.S.), and occasionally consumer groups and environmentalists. Organised political opposition has come from libertarians, the John Birch Society, the Ku Klux Klan, Robert F. Kennedy Jr, and the Green Party of the United States. “
– Wikipedia

I remember being assured of the dangers of fluoride by some earnest hippies up Queensland way. I was at a party and there they were boozing and smoking away and warning me of the dangers of fluoride in the water and how bad it was for our health. Smoke gets in your eyes, but it may also clog the arteries of reason itself.

More Helpful Dental Advice For 2025 & Beyond

Here’s yet more dental advice on better ways you can care for your teeth. Do not use mouth wash straight after cleaning your teeth with toothpaste, as it is a waste and removes the helpful effects of fluoride in your mouth. Further to that, do not rinse completely after brushing your teeth, rather leave some in there to go on with for the remainder of the day. You only need a pea-sized dob of toothpaste on your soft bristled brush, electric toothbrush of course, anymore is wasteful, according to the dental experts. If you want to use mouthwash, say once a week, do it prior to brushing your teeth. It is these little nuances which reveal the gold.

Concentrate on the job when cleaning your teeth, do not do it by rote. Be mindful of the task at hand rather than on automatic – I know that we value machines more than human beings, these days, but being aware is our bio-machine advanced setting. Keep that setting on when cleaning your teeth for best results.

Do not be one sides about things. Now, I could get into brain hemisphere stuff at this point but I won’t. Suffice to say, if you are right or left hand dominant make sure that you don’t neglect the side of your teeth and gums in which you hold the brush. Wow, who would have thought that there was so much material to delve into here.

Don’t wet your tooth brush head before brushing. Why? It dilutes the effects of the fluoride toothpaste. Water encourages foaming and that encourages spitting it out. Not what we want, apparently.

Flossing is the gold standard of dental hygiene, as it gets those tiny weeny bits out from between your teeth. Did anyone say anal retentiveness? No, of course not, little interdental brushes are better than standard floss. There are no limits to how far one can go, it seems.

Lastly, and most importantly go to the dentist for regular checkups every 6 months. Otherwise all your trips to the dental clinic will be emergency dental visits. You end up paying more money for these and experiencing a lot more pain and stress to boot. Smart people get ahead of the game.

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