Where does bacteria come from after we brush, floss, and rinse with mouthwash every crevice in our mouths?
In: Biology
Quite literally anywhere. It’s open season! Competition is low. The tongue is a sponge and you would be very hard pressed to sterilize that. Under the gums between the teeth is a good hiding spot. In your nasal cavity and throat(lugies and draining). On your lips. Inside the glands. On your bed. In a cavity. The list goes on.
You would need to mouthwash until your flesh started dieing or you got drunk off absorbed alcohol to get a decent mouth sterilization and all those outside the mouth sources… It’s a good thing the persistent bacteria is usually friendly enough.
Many of the bacteria remains, under the gum line especially, but also in through nose, palate, throat, tongue, inside salivary ducts, on your lips etc. You reintroduce different populations through food, drink and air, and every time you touch your face
1. You don’t remove every last bacteria or even the vast majority of them. The surviving ones repopulate.
2. Food, water, objects inserted into the mouth, the air.
Brushing only removes a percentage of the bacteria. What’s not removed just reproduces. Our bodies are teeming with bacteria.
In particular the digestive system. So even even if we could completely sterilize our mouths, the bacteria would return in short order.
One of the biggest things that brushing does is removes the food and nutrients on our teeth, in our gums, and on our tongue that the bacteria needs to reproduce. This is why we brush after meals.
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