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Stumbled on a stat that 90% of people brush their teeth wrong and it blew my mind
I was scrolling through dental hygiene forums last night, not for work but just bored, and saw this fact that 9 out of 10 people don't brush properly. Like they miss the gumline or go too hard and scrub off enamel. I mean, I see it every day at my job in the chair, but seeing a hard number like that made me laugh. It explains why so many patients come in with receding gums and swear they brush three times a day. The stat came from some study the ADA put out in 2023. I asked my coworker about it this morning and she just shrugged like "yeah, we know." Has anyone else run into a random stat that made you rethink something basic in your field?
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the_rowan1mo ago
Yeah, I actually push back on this a little. The 90% number comes from a very specific definition of "wrong" that includes even small mistakes, so someone who brushes decently but skips the gumline some days still gets lumped in with the folks using a hard bristle brush like they're sanding wood. It makes the statistic sound scarier than it is, and I bet if you asked most of that 90% if they think their teeth are healthy, they'd say yes because they don't have cavities or bleeding.
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simonl112mo ago
90% is insane. I still can't wrap my head around that number being real. My cousin is a dental hygienist and she says people come in all the time with bleeding gums from brushing too hard like they're scrubbing a toilet. She told me most folks just scrub back and forth instead of doing small circles at the gum line. Makes me wonder how many of those 90% are the ones calling their teeth sensitive while using a hard bristle brush.
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jessicac282mo ago
Did you catch that study about how a lot of people use a sawing motion instead of the right brushing technique? I read somewhere that the angle of the bristles matters just as much as how hard you press, and most folks hold their brush flat instead of at a 45 degree angle toward the gums. It makes me think your cousin sees so many people hurting themselves because they're just copying what they saw their parents do growing up. Do you think most people would actually change their brushing habits if they saw a video of how much damage they're doing?
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