Hydrogen Peroxide Ends Gingivitis, Keeps Teeth and Gums Healthy:
Three Levels Of Cleanliness For Brushing Your Teeth

Not cleaning your toothbrush just before brushing your teeth is a serious lack of hygiene. Most of the bacteria on your toothbrush comes from your mouth. Bacteria is the root cause of nearly all dental problems. Hydrogen peroxide kills all dental bacteria and hydrogen peroxide is very safe. Hydrogen peroxide for brushing teeth kills bacteria around teeth and gums, preventing cavities in your teeth and significantly reduces bone loss around teeth, which also reduces tooth loss. Hydrogen peroxide kills bacteria in and around gums, preventing gums from receding, allowing receded gums to regrow. Hydrogen peroxide also helps prevent heart disease caused by bacteria of gingivitis moving into the bloodstream. Unlike hydrogen peroxide, toothpaste does not kill bacteria.

3% Hydrogen Peroxide is Safe

The inexpensive (89 cents) hydrogen peroxide sold in brown bottles is 3 or 3.5 % hydrogen peroxide (see label) and safe for dental use. Here are three government pages discussing using hydrogen peroxide.

Hydrogen Peroxide is Powerful

“Hydrogen peroxide (H2O2) is one of the most powerful oxidizers known — stronger than chlorine, chlorine dioxide, …”

Hydrogen Peroxide and Dentists

In an effort to prevent lost sales from people preventing dental decay with hydrogen peroxide, some dentists say hydrogen peroxide can stain teeth. This can occur using the high concentration hydrogen peroxide found in dental offices and when using teeth whitening dental strips. The 3% hydrogen peroxide sold in brown bottles in grocery stores rarely if ever stains teeth.

Only the best dentist in San Diego deserves your trust for all your dental needs.

First Level:

Clean Your Toothbrush Before Brushing

Wet your toothbrush and then put a little liquid hand dish detergent (e.g. Dawn) on the brush part of the toothbrush. With the toothbrush handle in your hand, clean the brush part of the toothbrush by rubbing the brush with your thumb of the same hand you’re holding the toothbrush with. Next, rinse the toothbrush with running water while rubbing out the suds, food, germs, saliva, and other debris the dish detergent released. Notice the improved color of the brush. Make sure you clean and rinse the couple of inches of the handle near the brush and also the back of the brush. To see if your cleaning made a difference, clean your toothbrush this way again (right after the first toothbrush cleaning) and you’ll see a lot more suds because there’s little or no debris for the dish detergent to react with.

Second Level:

Sanitize Your Toothbrush With Hydrogen Peroxide

Where do these germs on your toothbrush come from? Most are bacteria from your mouth and rubbed off onto your toothbrush. The rest are bacteria that float around by air movement in your home, including fine spray from toilet flushing (according to ABC’s 20/20).

Pour a little hydrogen peroxide on your cleaned toothbrush, wait 5 seconds or so, and then rinse the toothbrush. Hydrogen peroxide is an oxidizing agent and will kill the germs on the toothbrush.

Your toothbrush may start foaming after 5 or 10 seconds, depends on how long you’ve been using your toothbrush. New tooth brushes won’t foam for a couple of months. The foam is caused by an enzyme in cells (catalase) that causes the breakdown of the hydrogen peroxide into water and oxygen bubbles (foam). When you brush your teeth, cells from your mouth are left on the toothbrush. When the toothbrush dries overnight, some of the cells dry up completely and crack releasing the enzyme. A cut will foam up with hydrogen peroxide because a cut is literally cut open cells. If you mix saliva and hydrogen peroxide, it won’t foam up because there are few broken cells in fresh saliva, although after dental work swishing with hydrogen peroxide will cause a mouth full of foam – and you should swish with hydrogen peroxide as soon as you can after dental work.

If you’re one to dunk your toothbrush into the bottle of hydrogen peroxide instead of pouring the hydrogen peroxide onto your toothbrush, don’t leave your toothbrush in the bottle of hydrogen peroxide. Plastic is pretty tough, but hydrogen peroxide is an oxidizing agent. There’s no telling what chemicals might form if the toothbrush is left in the hydrogen peroxide hour after hour, day after day.

Third Level:

Brush With Hydrogen Peroxide

For adults, after cleaning and sanitizing your toothbrush, pour a little hydrogen peroxide on the toothbrush and brush your teeth and gums. Hydrogen peroxide kills the bacteria (germs) that cause gingivitis. Gingivitis is a collection of symptoms of early periodontitis including swollen, tender, and bleeding gums caused by bacteria. If the bacteria of gingivitis isn’t reduced (with hydrogen peroxide or other effective means) the bacterial infection gradually develops into symptoms of gums separating from teeth, receding gums, and eventually irreversible symptoms of periodontitis of loss of bone of the socket anchoring the teeth to the jaw.

Brush your front teeth with an up and down motion. Brush your side teeth with an up and down motion using the wrist movement used to play foosball (table soccer). You shouldn’t have hydrogen peroxide on your teeth for more than a couple of minutes, and rinse your mouth with water a couple of times when you’re finished brushing.

Hydrogen peroxide tastes terrible at first, but after about two weeks it doesn’t have any taste at all. If you’re worried about the safety of brushing with hydrogen peroxide, in the government’s MedlinePlus encyclopedia, hydrogen peroxide is used as part of the treatment for trench mouth. Some dental products found in grocery stores contain hydrogen peroxide. Many teeth whitening products contain high concentration hydrogen peroxide. Of course, there’s nothing wrong with brushing with toothpaste after brushing with hydrogen peroxide, but be certain not to use a hard bristle toothbrush.

Dental plaque also contains bacteria and if not kept from forming, keeps the gums infected. Dental plaque is a clear, sticky mixture of mucus, food particles, and bacteria that forms on teeth. If dental plaque is not removed from teeth, it can turn white and harden (by the calcium of saliva) forming what is called tartar. Plaque can build up along the gum line (the gum-tooth line) and turn white before hardening, forming a soft while line along the gum line. When plaque hardens, it’s pretty hard to remove without a dentist, so remove it while it’s soft (easiest with an electric toothbrush) and keep it from ever forming. Don’t forget the gum line along the back of your teeth.

Hydrogen peroxide is good for your breath too. “Hydrogen peroxide significantly reduced the sulfur gas concentrations for eight hours.”

Fourth Level:

Hydrogen Peroxide
Below The Gum Line

Flossing with flossing string between your fingers helps remove sizable chunks of food from between teeth so germs supposedly have no food to live on, but what about small food particles? When is the last time you cleaned anything with a device shaped like taught string? Usually you use something which follows the contour of the surface you’re cleaning. Electric flossers have a soft rubber tip that vibrates at high speed creating a rubbing effect which more closely follows the contour of your teeth and gums. Bacteria is much smaller than food particles so obviously flossing does almost nothing about removing existing bacteria around teeth and gums. Very small food particles being left behind after brushing is inevitable, but hydrogen peroxide will kill the bacteria living on the left behind food particles.

Even if you brush with hydrogen peroxide and floss, the gums between your teeth probably bleed when you floss, meaning that even with hydrogen peroxide and flossing, plenty of bacteria is still present between your teeth and gums. Wherever gums bleed is where germs have infected the gums and destroyed cells in the gums causing the gums to bleed. When a dentist sees bleeding he’ll tell you, “You have gingivitis.”

For adults, here’s how to get to germs between teeth and gums. Don’t floss with flossing string between your fingers. Buy an electric flosser (or at least buy a bag of flossing picks – shaped like the letter P, about $3.00 for 90). Don’t buy an electric flosser that requires buying batteries (nor battery powered electric toothbrush). The rechargeable flossers have built in rechargeable batteries and come with a recharger and work great.

Sip about an ounce of hydrogen peroxide (without swallowing the hydrogen peroxide). Pool the hydrogen peroxide above the lower gum line by holding your lower lip out a little. This will pool the hydrogen peroxide between teeth and gums. Floss between gums and teeth while the hydrogen peroxide is pooled between gums and teeth. (Floss on both sides of the triangular shaped gums between teeth.) Flossing rubs the gums and allows the hydrogen peroxide to better penetrate the gums and reach bacteria in the gums. Flossing with hydrogen peroxide this way will remove almost all of the bacteria. After flossing with hydrogen peroxide for 3 days, flossing with hydrogen once a week is enough to keep bacteria numbers low enough to prevent gums from bleeding when flossing. Small parts of your gums closest to your teeth might turn white from the hydrogen peroxide and will return to pink in less than an hour. The white is where germ infection broke gum cells releasing the enzyme that causes hydrogen peroxide to foam. Using a hard tooth brush or brushing very hard can also break gum cells.

For upper teeth, sip about an ounce of hydrogen peroxide without swallowing any of the hydrogen peroxide. Next, force the hydrogen peroxide between the gums of the top teeth and the underside of the top lip (opposite side of where a mustache would or does grow), making the mustache area and upper cheeks pucker up. To do this, the top and bottom teeth are almost touching. Then bring your jaw down pulling the hydrogen peroxide between the top teeth. Repeat 7 or 8 times. This motion pushes hydrogen peroxide in below the gum line and draws food particle and germs out with the hydrogen peroxide. This motion also pulls food particles from between teeth in areas where a toothbrush can’t reach. There’s no real way to floss the upper teeth in a pool of hydrogen peroxide like lower teeth.

Avoid dental pain and dental disease, bad teeth, and losing your teeth, by brushing with hydrogen peroxide. Brushing with hydrogen peroxide kills bacteria around teeth and gums, which stops or slows bone loss around teeth, and helps prevent heart disease caused by dental bacteria spreading to arteries. If you really don’t want to brush with hydrogen peroxide, at least wash and sanitize your toothbrush with hydrogen peroxide every day.

Hydrogen Peroxide and Fillings

Someone wrote, “I’ve been using Hydrogen Peroxide as you suggest, but my dentist informed me that hydrogen peroxide will eat away my gold and resin fillings. Does hydrogen peroxide damage/erode fillings?” No. Gold is inert. According to a study by the Germans, “Hydrogen peroxide or carbamide peroxide bleaching systems does not produce changes in surface morphology or microhardness of common dental restorative materials.” Despite the study, for your gums, it’s probably best to keep the time you use hydrogen peroxide to less than 2 minutes a day.

Gingivitis Can Cause and Usually Contributes To Heart Disease,
More Preventative Measures For Your Teeth

RESPECT

I get no respect, no respect at all. I told my dentist, “Hey Doc, my teeth are going yellow.” He told me to wear a brown necktie.