Serioulsy, brush your teeth to avoid tooth decay and dental problems, as fixing those will be expensive, painful and still lead to substandard replacements.
It there is a single personal care thing I wish I listened more to my parents and common sense, that's it.
Diet and exercise are important as well but, compared to those, the amount of effort, willpower and discipline associated to keeping your teeth clean is risible.
There was a thread on reddit asking dentists questions and what stood out to me was unanimous agreement in multiple separate convos of dentist redditors that electric toothbrushes work better than manual. The theme every time was: Use electric. Use very light pressure (don't even open your mouth too wide because your cheeks add pressure). Spend a good amount of time on each tooth --to the point they recommend brushes with built-in timers to keep you on the clock.
As for flossing: All I know is that before I started flossing, I was accumulating measurable gum damage. After I started, it healed. Now when I slack off, I get sore spots. When I start again, they heal. And, when I'm flossing I find it incredible how much gunk I pull out of my gums even right after a through brushing. It's gross. But, far more gross would be just leaving it there to rot.
You should not rinse directly after brushing. Toothpaste has a higher concentration of fluoride than any mouthwash, if you're going to use a rinse the recommendation is to wait 30 mins after brushing, and you should never rinse with water
Also, if you're not supposed to rinse for a while after brushing, and you're not supposed to brush for a while after eating, and anyway eating with morning breath is gross, but so is eating with toothpaste-breath... when the hell are you supposed to eat breakfast?
It's fine to swish and spit with a small amount (~5mL) of water, making a "slurry" with the toothpaste. It may even be beneficial because the swishing would coat all of your mouth's surfaces.
Is this common advice? I would find having my mouth coated with toothpaste residue to be extremely off putting. You would also end up swallowing quite a bit, yes?
It’s common advice from all the dentists and hygienists I’ve ever seen, and it’s not something that comes up in conversation among my friends here but from personal experience I wanna say all or most of my partners I’ve ever seen brush their teeth they do the same. If it helps, this is in Europe, so we (as in dentists here) may have differing guidelines as you.
From what I know, the gist is that fluoride is mineralized into enamel which strengthens it (not sure if this is the correct phrasing). Whatever the correct phrase is, it works by direct prolonged contact. Not rinsing is a way to guarantee this contact, but even if you do there’s still fluoride in your saliva to do some good.
I imagine the taste depends on your toothpaste. I use a plain one (Elmex) that doesn’t really have a taste, and the taste goes away fast enough that I don’t notice it.
As far as swallowing goes, not really. Most of it gets spat out. Besides, (some) astronauts in space just swallow it all instead of spitting cause it’s cleaner :)
Yes I know fluoride can be toxic but the amount you’d swallow (a small pea sized dab is all you need, all those pictures of the entire brush covered by toothpaste is advertisement to get you to think you need that much) is probably not going to have any effect.
Leaving toothpaste residue (containing fluoride) on your teeth is the main thing toothpaste is for.
Fluoride changes the chemical properties of tooth enamel to make it stronger. So removing toothpaste immediately after applying it reduces the effectiveness.
If not rinsing is intolerable then rinsing with a fluorinated mouthwash, which provides less fluoride that toothpaste but is still better than nothing, would be a better choice.
Me and thousands of dollars in periodontal treatments are a living anecdotal testimony to that fact. mechanical disruption of the biofilms in the interdental space is the only known efficacious prophylaxis for gum disease that I know of. The water pik feels great but just doesn't do the job.
Surely I should do better taking care of my gums (flossing...:|), but I also need to improve my diet and exercise, among other things.
I'd hate to find out that the things in my life that I do manage to fix turn out to be more difficult and less effectual than other options...