Brushing Teeth Correctly

Brushing of teeth correctly is the most effective way of keeping teeth cleaned and having healthy gums. It becomes one of the foremost steps in maintaining oral hygiene due to prevention of bacterial plaque deposit on the teeth, giving rise to bad breath, tooth cavities and gum diseases. Some thing which is not visible now, is the saving of costly treatments in future, if the teeth are not cleaned properly after meals as a regular habit.
Generally people brush teeth keeping in view their social acceptability and freshness in breath reason. It is a good to promote brushing habit in children. It is still important to know what, how and why factors of brushing teeth, which people do not know and they can cause damage to their teeth and gums by brushing teeth in a wrong manner.
Learning of Tooth brushing:
It is perhaps the only way people clean teeth in the home environment. To effectively and safely clean the teeth one needs to know proper method and the occasions, when and how the teeth should be brushed, which unfortunately they are not in a position to learn correctly and just use their commonsense. One needs to learn by viewing a demonstration.
Selection of Brush:
In the past, hog bristles were used. Now scientifically designed brushes by different brands and features are available like having hard, medium and soft brush bristles made of nylon, with variable shapes and sizes of brush handle and head bristles. In an ideal tooth brush, the bristles should be trimmed and flat. The diamond shaped brush head offers better accessibility to the backside teeth. Some people prefer short head, which can be easily used for backside teeth.
Teeth Brushing Technique:
If there is no problem in the way one brushes the teeth, one should continue the same way. In case there is a problem, a nearby dentist is the best person to advise the right method of brushing.
Frequency of Teeth Brushing:
Although people mostly people are used to brush teeth once a day, brushing of teeth twice a day is more beneficial, once after breakfast and once after dinner so that during entire day and night there are no food particles sticking to the tooth, a source of bacterial action and bad smell not liked by people, when one talks to them. Many people hurriedly do tooth brushing leaving major portion of tooth surface and gums not properly cleaned.
There is no specific guideline. The objective is that the entire teeth surface gets cleaned, externally as well as internally. Ideally one should spend 3-5 minutes in teeth cleaning.
Right Way of Tooth Brushing:
In principle there are two fundamental movements taking place, while brushing i.e. sweeping and penetration. When the movement is done in reverse direction and pressure on the teeth is applied, there is an event of penetration of bristles in the crevices gums to cause the food particles removal from otherwise inaccessible region of the space between gums and teeth, hence affects complete cleaning of the teeth and gum surfaces.
Brushing in Children:
In case of children a small soft brush is used. The horizontal movement of the tooth brush provides both sweeping and penetrating action. The short strokes mostly do the penetration action, which is more useful on the internal surfaces of the teeth.
Tooth Brushing in Adults:
For cleaning the teeth in adults, there is need of multiple movements like by moving bristles at 45 degree angle and making forward and backward movements or give a rotation movement from gums to teeth. It is a necessary taking help of the dentist if the one finds difficulty in to perform multiple movements so that there is better cleaning of all the tooth surfaces.

Wrong Practices in Tooth Brushing:
Gently pressing the tooth brush resulting into incomplete penetration of bristles.
By not keeping the tooth brush flat against the teeth and gums resulting in inefficient cleaning and damaging the bristles of the tooth brush causing undesired injuries.
Not cleaning all the areas of teeth again a deficiency in performance of cleaning besides causing the gums to recede producing sensitivity to hot and cold liquids.