What does toothpaste do when I’m brushing? Why is it better than not using toothpaste?
In: Chemistry
The bacteria in your mouth form a thin, sticky film (“plaque”) that covers all of your mouth if you haven’t brushed recently. Over time, that film becomes stickier, so any you miss becomes harder and harder to remove. Eventually it picks up minerals from your saliva and hardens into a rock-like material (“calculus” or “tartar”), which is what your dentist scrapes off when you go in for a cleaning.
Brushes are soft, and can only remove things that aren’t sticking to your teeth very well. That means little bits of food debris and the very early stages of this film. Toothpaste contains abrasives that can scrape off some of the stickier medium stages of plaque as well, which reduces the amount that eventually hardens into tartar (which is too firmly stuck to be removed by brushing). Most toothpastes also contain small amounts of fluoride, which gets built into the crystal structure of the surface of your teeth in a way that makes them decay more slowly.
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