let's talk toothpaste

i know some of you are thinking tammy…you have three bachelor’s degrees from the notoriously difficult creighton university in omaha, ne, and the best thing you have to offer by way of advise is about toothpaste! to you i reply, just hear me out on this one, please?

on a recent visit to my dentist for my regular six month cleaning, i noticed that my tooth sensitivity was worse that usual. see i thought in my younger years that if i pressed really hard and really scrubbed my teeth they would be extra clean and i would score bonus points with the hygienist and the dentist…oh how wrong i was!

i really like my hygienist because she is not the type that gets on her high-horse and pretends to be something that she is not nor does she tongue-lash you to death if you don’t floss 500 times a day (see one of my many flaws is that i hate, i repeat hate, flossing my teeth) and i used to routinely get tongue-lashed by old hygienist for not flossing. so i changed to a new hygienist and invested in reach’s™ greatest invention to date in the oral health department…the tooth-flosser, in my opinion it’s right up there with the tongue cleaner and i am so serious about that!

anyway, back to my story. so there i lay there in the most uncomfortable dentist’s chair known to man kind and my hygienist is disclosing more about her personal life than i particularly care to hear about and then suddenly she blasts my teeth with ice cold water after brushing them with a high powered toothbrush…and naturally i jumped. she then became super giggly and spits out, “have you ever noticed that the only temperature of water in a dentist’s office is ice cold?” i sarcastically reply “yes, deb…it never fails you do that to me every time! it’s as if you enjoy torturing me because i have sensitive teeth, and then you proceed to make that same stupid and lame comment every time! i have realized that, after all i have been coming to this office…oh i don't know...my whole life!?!”

then she moves on to my least favorite part of the visit…the flossing! so she starts flossing and going on and on about her life and she just suddenly stops and says “oh my tammy, your gums on the lower left tongue side of your mouth are really really red! in fact, i would say it is two to three times redder than all of your other gum tissue.” i reply, “hum, that’s odd (see, thankfully my teeth have always been great or perfect with the exception of this recent sensitivity issue)…i just thought it was red and sort of achy because of my tooth hypersensitivity?”

she goes on probing me as if i were someone being interrogated during the spanish inquisition…”have you done this? what about that? have you recently changed toothpaste?” i reply, “yes, i have recently changed toothpaste. but what does that have to do with my gums being red?” she proceeded to explain to me that we can be allergic to toothpaste. still laying there waiting for my procedure to conclude, i admit i was sort of dumb-founded by her remark after-all isn’t toothpaste just toothpaste? the more i thought of it and reflected on what i had learned in dr. shibata’s very informative, but extraordinarily hard, immunology class…everything just sort of clicked. (for your sake i won’t dive into how and why the body responds to an allergy creating an allergic reaction but if you ever need to know, just know i am your go-to girl.)

which brings me to my point…no, toothpaste is not just toothpaste. here is the take away message of my story…before you walk down the isle of your local dollar store to pick up a tube of what you think is crest™ (really it’s a foreign knock off) because it’s a killer deal or down the oral hygiene isle of your favorite department store for toothpaste, think twice!

after all, the chinese did just recently paint children’s toys with life-killing mercury containing paint…sorry katie, stick to the coach purses and jimmy chew shoes and you’ll be fine:) and as for your favorite department store, don’t go for a huge tube of something you have never tried before because it’s "the better deal"; rather, head to the travel section and see if they make it in the travel size if not go for the smallest tube you can possibly find because your gum tissue might be allergic to the particular chemicals used in that certain brand of toothpaste! after using the toothpaste for a couple of weeks and if you don’t notice any increased sensitivity or redness in your gums… i’d say you found a winner and a keeper!

to healthier gums and a lot less painful brushing my friends!