Last Christmas, we did Secret Santa just amongst my in-laws of my generation. NPY saw a Red Flag Deals about this electric toothbrush system, regular over $100 and discounted to $50 for the day (or week) on Amazon. He told me about it as he was adding it to his wishlist on Elfster and right away, I ordered it as my gift to him and marked it as Purchased in Elfster. Because I believe it was a good gift and something he would use.
Back up a month or so and Kiddo had started using his electric toothbrush again and compared to the haphazard way he would brush his own teeth, or even that I would brush his teeth totally like 30 seconds because he doth protest. Even with a kiddy electric toothbrush that is shaped like a Crayola crayon, I was brushing for longer, reaching in deeper and feeling confident it was a doing a good job because it was spinning and in total brushing more than I was manually brushing.
Which is when I realized that’s what I needed.
My sister has been using one for years. My dental hygienst also recommended it and I’ve been with him for 17 years (since 2005) and I can no longer really know why I resisted. I think I didn’t want to deal with a charging station and battery operation – analogue is better, was what I thought. My hygienist recently told me that he wasn’t using an electric toothbrush at present – it broke down? – so he was manually brushing for six whole minutes.
As they say, “youth is wasted on the young”. Likewise, “good teeth is wasted on the young”!
Earlier this year, I was handed a troubling prognosis from an endodontist about one of my teeth and it’s not a brushing issue exactly, but the very root of issues with this tooth may be related to some aggressive toothbrushing at the corner spot that 10 years ago came to a head and I had to have some minor dental surgery to address gum recession. That surgery was either botched slightly or just 10 years have passed and things deteriorated.
I am a convert to electric toothbrush as of two days after Christmas and NPY followed a couple of months later for the following reasons:
- It will reduce gum abrasion because it does its thing and I’m not at risk of pressing down too hard.
- When you use more natural, less frothing toothpaste that doesn’t feel like it’s cleaning your teeth with manual brushing – it was an effective toothpaste with the power of electric toothbrush.
- The sheer number of times it turns, it’s triplicate of my manual effort.
- Setting a good example of the kids whom I would want to convert earlier than I did.
- I can multitask while tooth-brushing and still get it done for long enough.
- The two-minute timer with vibration every 30-seconds is golden for getting me to stick to two minutes of brushing and it’s almost like mini self-care – nothing is stopping me from brushing enough!