39
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
this post was submitted on 08 Oct 2026
39 points (100.0% liked)
Asklemmy
55771 readers
412 users here now
A loosely moderated place to ask open-ended questions
Search asklemmy ๐
If your post meets the following criteria, it's welcome here!
- Open-ended question
- Not offensive: at this point, we do not have the bandwidth to moderate overtly political discussions. Assume best intent and be excellent to each other.
- Not regarding using or support for Lemmy: context, see the list of support communities and tools for finding communities below
- Not ad nauseam inducing: please make sure it is a question that would be new to most members
- An actual topic of discussion
Looking for support?
Looking for a community?
- Lemmyverse: community search
- sub.rehab: maps old subreddits to fediverse options, marks official as such
- !lemmy411@lemmy.ca: a community for finding communities
~Icon~ ~by~ ~@Double_A@discuss.tchncs.de~
founded 7 years ago
MODERATORS
The greatest frontline oral health routine is just a wood toothpick and a tongue scraper.
We have kind of been tacitly sold this idea that the way to keep our mouth clean is to use rinses and to brush. The deeper truth is that preventative maintenance is much better!
Get the bacteria fuel off of that wet carpet called a tongue, and get it out of the gaps where your gums meet the teeth.
I still brush my teeth, but my friends, hear me!
If you pick and scrape 10 minutes after eating, the requirement to brush almost goes away. I am not saying to stop. I'm just saying that what I personally experienced was that my mouth feel and teeth were so clean, there were many days that if I did not brush by habit I would have forgotten. I think a lot of people (myself included) use teeth fuzzies and mouth feel as the signal to brush.
Edit: there is a very interesting read about the origins of the toothpick in North America! If you're interested a quick web search will show you the way. But the gist of it is that Brazilians were noted to have exceptional oral care and wonderful teeth in the 1800s, when no modern dentistry existed - their use of the toothpick was found to be what made it so! Although noted to be an exceptional method of keeping one's mouth and teeth clean, it did not catch on due to being considered a vulgar practice in NA.