Fluoride in Toothpaste Also Changes the Bacteria In Your Mouth

This bacterial benefit may be even bigger than the tooth toughening.

Lady, there’s such a thing as too much multitasking. Brush, then trays! Photo by Diana Polekhina on Unsplash

This article is going to start off with some bad news for germaphobes: your mouth is full of bacteria. Just teeming with ’em. Even if you literally just spat out your mouthful of burning mouthwash, there’s still lots of bacteria in there, and they’re rapidly breeding to replenish their numbers.

We refer to this collection of bacteria as our oral microbiome, and it’s something that we need to learn to live with. We can temporarily kill them off, but they come back in minutes to hours.

(In fact, this opens up a fascinating discussion about whether mouthwash is a good or bad thing. After all, it doesn’t distinguish between good vs bad bacteria in our mouth. Is it better to kill off the bad bacteria, even though we’re doing collateral damage? Or is it a mistake to use mouthwash, as it gives bad bacteria a chance to outcompete their better-for-us competitors? The science is still out — but that’s another article.)

We each have our own unique oral microbiome, and it’s affected by many different factors, including:

• What we eat and drink
• Inflammatory conditions
• Consumption of…