Many patients, during their nightly or early morning ritual of dental hygiene, opt for mouth washes and rinses that are full of alcohol. While these rinses are great for killing off bacteria, they can also dry your mouth out, just due to the chemical nature of the alcohol itself. Dry mouths are more vulnerable to bacteria, and can lead to inflamed oral tissue, especially at the gums. Alcoholic mouth rinses have also been shown to raise the blood pressure of some patients.
Fluoride rinses, on the other hand, contain little to no alcohol. With a fluoride rinse, your teeth will get a full immersion in a fluoride-based liquid that can work to protect teeth and stop the reproduction of harmful oral bacteria.
When you’re looking for mouth rinses:
- Read the active ingredients. Look for those that have a fluoride mix, as opposed to just alcohol.
- Avoid mouth rinses that claim to do it all. A mouth rinse isn’t a miracle cure for every problem that you might have with your teeth.
- Many “whitening” mixes are actually fluoride rinses. They advertise whitening on the label because most consumers want to choose those right away, but they will also just be fluoride-based solutions, which are your ideal solution for a rinse before or after sleep.
An Ounce of Prevention
Flouride is so valuable for dental health that it’s been added to the public water source of many cities around the world. Areas where flouride hasn’t been added have noticeably higher rates of dental decay. As part of your regular habit of drinking water, then, fluoride is able to protect your teeth from the damage of acid-producing bacteria.
Fluoride rinse works in a similar way, by bathing your teeth in a protective layer of the element that can push back against the reproductive cycle of bacteria, and leave your mouth feeling fresh and clean for up to 24 hours. That day-long cycle is the typical reproduction cycle of the plaque-building bacteria in your mouth. One fluoride rinse every 24 hours stops them in their tracks.
