There Are Few More Important “Thinking Skills” Than Being Able to Think At Least Once a Day About How to Best Take Care of Your Teeth
There are few things that make it more difficult to think straight than a bad toothache. So, even if it’s a bit of a stretch, I’m going to use that reality as justification for what I’m about to say on a blog about the brain and the mind and thinking skills. And it really isn’t that much of a stretch. Taking care of our teeth is a good thinking skill.
Howse’dat?
Keeping your teeth as free of one of the most destructive organisms known to exist—dental plaque—is something that you have to think about doing at least once a day or it doesn’t get done. Or doesn’t get done effectively.
I know that for a fact. Because I know a way to prevent you from ever having to go to a dentist again with a fresh cavity.
I’ve talked up this method at every opportunity since I learned about it from the physician and researcher who invented it more than 30 years ago. I’ve talked about it repeatedly to my children. To others in my family. To casual friends and close friends and, on those rare occasions when the opportunity arised, to total strangers. I’ve even tried to get dentists interested.
The problem may be that we can’t really see what happens in our mouth well. So, out of sight, soon out of mind, no matter how many photos we’ve viewed of the damage that the germs of the mouth can do to our choppers.
My tooth-cleaning method was invented by none other than the man who discovered plaque back in the 1910s—Dr. Samuel Bass of Tulane Medical School. He wasn’t studying tooth decay but rather yellow fever. This led him to spend a lot of time looking in people’s mouths, and as he did so, he began to notice a discoloring, odor-causing deposit on people’s teeth around the gumline. He soon concluded that this build-up was the cause of most tooth decay. He named it plaque. And he set about designing a cleaning method to keep it at bay.
Dr. Bass was 96 years young when I met him as a young magazine writer just beginning to pursue my interest of the past 30-plus years in better thinking skills and brain function research. He was still living a few blocks from Tulane University in New Orleans. And he still had every single one of his adult teeth. They gleamed back at me as we talked.
Here is how Dr. Bass said he cleaned his teeth daily:
1) He flossed carefully with a thin, unwaxed floss of his own invention. He took especially care to work the floss down under the gumline and “scoop” the plague assembling there up and out. He did this repeatedly, literally scrubbing as much of the base of each tooth as he could reach, all the while flicking the floss upward.
2) He then reached for a toothbrush with firm, rounded bristles and firmly scrubbed around the gumline.
3) Next, he reinserted the toothbrush at about a 45 degree angle downward and, flicking his wrist upward, once again repeatedly attacked the plague on his lower jaw teeth with a motion intented to flick it up and off. Then he went at the upper jaw teeth with the brush at a 45 degree angle upward.
4) Finally, he used his toothbrush to firmly scrub the caps of his teeth. And, one more time, the sides.
For decades, the Butler company manufactured the floss that Dr. Bass invented (it was branded as Right Kind®), but a few years ago, they discontinued the line. Now, I buy the smallest unwaxed floss sold by CVS drugstores. And I use a medium Oral B toothbrush. And the only dental work I’ve needed to have done since interviewing Dr. Samuel Bass was left over from the damage done to my teeth before I met him.
Go think! Then, go floss, every day, without fail! I guarantee you’ll like the results.
