Is an Electric Toothbrush Better?
The electric toothbrush has been around for a surprisingly long 50 years. Those first electric toothbrushes had bristles that moved back and forth in a scrubbing motion that was very slow compared to the movements made by the modern electric toothbrush. The most advanced type of electric toothbrush that you can buy today is a sonic-type toothbrush. These use the motion of the bristles and a sonic element to thoroughly remove plaque from teeth.
The vibrations in a standard electric toothbrush cause the bristles to move up to almost 8,000 strokes per minute. This is obviously far more brush strokes than you could make with a manual toothbrush, even if you brushed as fast as possible. But sonic toothbrushes can vibrate fast enough to cause over 40,000 strokes per minute. This can remove plaque better and much more effectively than manual brushing.
The sonic toothbrush also cleans in another way. Because of the high speed of the vibrations, the movement of the air around the bristles causes fluid to move, and essentially displaces the plaque in areas where the bristles haven’t touched. If you hold a sonic electric toothbrush above a bowl of water, without letting the bristles touch the water, you’ll be able to detect movement in the fluid caused by the vibration. This happens to the moisture on the teeth. It moves the fluid so that it washes away the plaque. So even if you miss a spot with the bristles, the “sonic” action of the toothbrush will have still removed most or all of the plaque.
While you couldn’t just hold the toothbrush in your mouth and clean your teeth, the sonic quality can be helpful in preventing gum disease. That’s because the fluid movement occurs for up to 1/8 of an inch beyond where the bristles touch. This allows the electric toothbrush to agitate the fluid on the teeth below the gum line to help remove plaque, as well as in the spaces between the teeth.
The areas where the bristles make contact are thoroughly scrubbed by the incredibly fast movement of the bristles. In fact, in laboratory tests, a sonic electric toothbrush was determined to remove 95% of plaque in 5 seconds, and after 10 seconds all of the surface plaque had been removed.
With its 40,000 strokes per minute, the sonic electric toothbrush is the most effective way of removing plaque. Comparatively, the standard electric toothbrush can only manage up to about 8,000 strokes per minute. But compared to the number of strokes a person usually manages with manual brushing – usually no more than about 300 strokes per minute – it’s easy to see why an electric toothbrush is the better choice, even if it’s not a sonic-type brush.
The best choice, however, is clearly a sonic toothbrush. This type of electric toothbrush does cost more, but thanks to the fast and thorough plaque removal you could save on dental bills far in excess of the cost of the toothbrush.
