Few daily habits play as vital a role in maintaining your overall health as brushing. A clingy biofilm made of lingering food particles and bacteria called plaque sticks to your teeth throughout the day, transforming the sugars and carbohydrates you consume into harmful substances that eat away at the hard outer layer of your called enamel. At Burlingame Dental Arts, your Southwest Portland dentist of choice, we work to keep ahead of the trends and let our patients know about what is coming in the dental world.
Failing to brush allows plaque to build up on your teeth where it can cause even more damage to your oral health over time. Fortunately, brushing twice daily allows you to remove plaque from the surface of your teeth and prevent the damage that occurs due to acids produced.
Of course, if you’re like most people, you’ve probably gotten a little lacks with your brushing routine and technique. The American Dental Association recommends brushing for two minutes, twice a day- once in the morning and just prior to bed. Unfortunately, despite the AMA’s recommendations, studies show that the average adult only spends ¼ of the amount of time brushing they should daily.’
The World’s First Intelligent Toothbrush
If you count yourself among those who don’t brush as well or as often as you should, help is on the way in the form of the world’s first intelligent toothbrush.
Announced at this year’s International CES Show in Las Vegas, the Kolibree smart toothbrush is the world’s first brush that actually keeps tabs on your brushing habits. Due to be released later in 2014, the Kolibree provide users with detailed information about their brushing habits and provide tips on how users can improve their oral health.
According to the brush’s manufacturers, the Kolibree with help users focus on their long-term oral health progress by analyzing an individual’s brushing habits, the way the user holds and moves the brush around their teeth and gums, and keep track of how long the user brushes each day.
After downloading the toothbrush’s app to a smartphone, the Kolibree communicates with the phone via a Bluetooth connection, recording every stroke. The data then syncs to the apps dashboard, providing users with a breakdown of their brushing habits and whether they are successfully hitting those hard to reach places in the mouth. The app can even be synced to several brushes at once, so everyone in the family can have their dental habits analyzed and recorded.
Brush Better and More Frequently
The Kolibree even helps to motivate family members to brush better and more frequently by allowing members to earn badges as they score higher on the correct brushing scale. Each time a user goes to brush, the Koilbree’s app generates a score that represents how well they did. This allows users to visualize their progress by monitoring scores and setting new goals in order to stay involved and motivated. The better a user’s brushing habits become, the more badges they’ll earn.
The one drawback this new technology seems to have is that it all but eliminates the childhood honored tradition of running a toothbrush under the faucet and assuring mom and dad that you really did brush.
While the price for the world’s first smart toothbrush has yet to be determined, it’s expected the Kilibree will cost between $100 and $200.