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Cleaning your teeth with an electric tooth brush

by Admin on February 26, 2014

Many people still use a manual toothbrush to clean their teeth, a few of the problems associated with this are:

  1. You have no idea if you are pressing too hard when you brush.
  2. Many people’s action with a toothbrush is not the most efficient for the best cleaning.
  3. It is difficult to reach some areas of your teeth, especially the inside and right at the very back.
  4. People often tend not to brush for the correct length of time.

This can result in your teeth not being quite as clean as you had hoped. A green solution to this is to start to use an electric toothbrush, and here’s how.

How to clean with an electric toothbrush.

Always and all the bristles up towards the gum line on the top teeth and down towards the gum line on the lower teeth. This will ensure that this critical gum/tooth area is kept clean, if you brush with the bristles angled straight on towards the tooth it will clean, but nowhere near as well as if you angle the bristles.

Apply a pea sized amount of toothpaste to the toothbrush and placed toothbrush in your mouth for you turn on the electric motion, this saves you splashing toothpaste everywhere!

Then simply allow the toothbrush to run over the outer surface of your teeth keeping the brush in place for a few seconds on each tooth, there is no need to work in any rushing or circular motion, as the toothbrush is designed to do this for you. Move gently  from one tooth to another along the whole outer surface (the cheek side), once this is done repeat on the top surface (the biting side) and then finally on the inside of your teeth (that tongue side).

Most electric toothbrushes deep after 30 seconds, this indicates that you have finished cleaning this quadrant and it is time to move onto the next quadrant-again cleaning the outer surface, biting surface and inner surface of that quadrant for 30 seconds.

Many of the more advanced electric toothbrushes also have a pressure sensor, these are good to go for if it fits within your budget as these will show you if you are pressing too hard when cleaning your teeth. People often feel they need to press hard to get the deepest clean, however this can damage the sensitive gumline if too hard and action is used.


The video above shows the use of a Philips toothbrush, however there are also other makes of electric toothbrush on the market. If you would like any further advice about brushing your teeth with an electric toothbrush then please do request an appointment with our dental health educator.

Senova Dental Studios are a Private dental practice in Watford, Hertfordshire our patients travel from around the UK to visit us.

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