You might be surprised to find out that rinsing your mouth after brushing your teeth could be doing more harm than good. 

One of the main ingredients in most toothpaste is fluoride. Fluoride helps to protect teeth by building up your tooth enamel. To do this, fluoride bonds with the calcium and phosphate that naturally exists in your enamel. This means that fluoride helps to prevent tooth decay, cavities and keeps your teeth strong. 

If you’re rinsing your mouth with a lot of water, it will wash away the protective layer of fluoride that you’ve just put on your teeth.

But it is possible to get too much of a good thing, even fluoride. It takes a lot, but people can get fluoride poisoning or dental fluorosis. As an adult, you would have to continuously ingest a lot of fluoride for this to happen. It’s more likely that children will ingest too much fluoride than adults, which is why we recommend that children use child-friendly toothpaste and only a pea-size amount. 

Dental fluorosis can cause white spots, lines or discolouration to the enamel. Again, this mostly happens when children regularly use adult toothpaste or ingest too much fluoride over a long period of time. Generally, you cannot develop dental fluorosis past the age of eight because it affects the adult teeth forming below the surface of the gums.

In low doses, fluoride is very good for you and your teeth. We even put it in our Winnipeg water <link to previous blog>. In Canada, the fluoride in toothpaste and our tap water is strictly regulated. 

And because we have fluoride in our tap water, we recommend using a small amount of water to rinse away the toothpaste in your mouth after brushing. While it will rinse some of the newly added fluoride, getting rid of the foam and other particles that you’ve just brushed away will benefit your teeth.

It’s important to get your teeth checked and cleaned regularly by your dentist. Book an appointment today at either of our Winnipeg clinics, located at St. Vital Centre and Garden City Shopping Centre.