How much technology do we need in a toothbrush?
It seems like the prevailing recommendation these days from dentists is that we should all be using electric toothbrushes.
This has been the case with the last three dentists I went to. They all said that an electric toothbrush was a modern convenience that got our teeth far cleaner than if we were to just manual brush them like neanderthals. There was only one dentist years ago who suggested I stick with the old fashioned brush to help protect my sensitive gums. But now he seems like an outlier. We've injected technology into our toothbrushes and there is no going back.
There are plenty of different versions of the electric toothbrush. There are tiny battery-powered options from small DTC brands like Quip. Then there are the established players like Oral-B and Philips. There may be different marketing jargon to differentiate them, but they're basically all doing the same thing. They're using a small motor to move the brush faster than we ever could using just our hands.
Faster brushing must mean better brushing right? Sure, in most cases that seems logical. But what else should a toothbrush be doing? Should it be tracking your brushing habits? It certainly can. A few years back I was given a free electric toothbrush from my dental insurance provider Beam. At first glance, it seemed like a pretty ordinary electric toothbrush. But then it could also connect to an app. And that app could track exactly how many times you were brushing your teeth (let's hope that most people stick to at least twice a day, but who knows?) This brushing data was valuable for an insurance company. The more proof of brushing, the more likely you are to have a smaller bill at the dentist. It is in their best interest to track this data and game-ify it in a way to incentivize people to keep using it.
Needless to say, I stopped using the Beam app and toothbrush pretty quickly.
But a few years later, I did fall victim to one of those so called "Amazing Black Friday Deals!" on a new electric toothbrush. It was from Oral-B and it was called the “Genius X”. It seemed like the kind of brush a tech-savvy gentleman like myself should be using. Not only did it have plenty of different settings for all my brushing needs (sensitive, tongue cleaning, etc.) but it also connected to an app from Oral-B.
After my experience with the Beam app, I was pretty hesitant to use another piece of software to track my teeth brushing. But the box claimed that the brush had "Artificial Intelligence". It could intelligently assess each of my brushing sessions to see if I had actually done a good job. Huh, this sounded like something worth testing out right?
It was a pretty cool feature at first! The toothbrush even came with a special case that had a USB port to charge your phone while you used it for the AI experience. It was definitely a gimmick and the charging power of the case was laughable. But you could plug in your phone and perch it atop a stand so you could see the screen while brushing. Bluetooth connected the toothbrush to the phone when you opened the Oral-B app.
The setup process was a bit finicky which still seems to be the case with most bluetooth devices. Once everything was working properly, you could see a diagram of your mouth on the screen. When you moved the toothbrush to different corners of your mouth, the teeth on screen would change colors. The app was actually tracking the location of the brush within your mouth to make sure you're spending enough time cleaning each tooth. When enough time was spent on each tooth, it would turn green on screen and you would move onto the next section. After two minutes, you had mastered the art of brushing and hopefully turned all corners of your mouth green!
It was actually kinda fun. And the other bonus was that the brush would vibrate and there would be an indicator on the screen if you were brushing too forcefully. For someone like me with sensitive gums, this was a fantastic feature. I could get the powerful clean from an electric toothbrush without worrying about it being too intense.
As you may be able to guess, the excitement of using the app everyday to brush my teeth quickly wore off. After a while, I was pretty confident in my ability to get all the angles and corners of my mouth without some "AI" confirming it. The Oral-B app was also extremely buggy. Who has time to pair and unpair their toothbrush several times before a task that should take no more than two minutes to complete? Before long, I just deleted the app and gave up.
But the toothbrush was still really solid even without pairing it with the app! I still use it today (after one warranty replacement when it inexplicably just gave me error messages that seemed more to do with its wonky tech than any issue with the actual motor or brushing components).
So what is the point of this? Well, oral hygiene is another part of our lives where maybe we have enough technology as it is. There will always be gimmicks to get people to buy commodities like toothbrushes. Do you remember all the fuss made about toothbrushes that had bent necks to hit hard to reach corners of the mouth? What about all those different bristle patterns and rubber insets that were supposed to clean more plaque than ever before? I even remember being blown away by a glow-in-the-dark toothbrush as a kid too!
Let's all take a moment to assess the technology of our toothbrush. Whether you have an electric toothbrush with all sorts of sensors that can connect to your phone, or you're still rocking the cheapest plastic or bamboo manual model, how is it working for you?
What kinds of technology would actually improve on this most basic of daily habits?
Thanks for reading, I’ll see you next week!
P.S. - Hey, it’s a new year! Could you use some help reviewing what worked for you last year and what could be better for 2023? Need some help building positive habits or ditching negative ones? Iterating on a new business idea and need some guidance? Or maybe you just want to say hello and pick my brain for a bit, that’s fine too! If you’d like to chat, feel free to book some time with me here!
I think one of the more important things is flossing, which is a pain, especially when you have a couple of bridges, and you have to get under them. I've been using Doctor's BrushPicks for years, and my dentist and hygienist always say my in-betweens look great.
And I use a regular old toothbrush most often, but a few times a week, I'll use my electric one just to change things up. :)
Enjoyed your writing about it. :)
Using an electric toothbrush has seriously changed the feedback I get in my 6 month dental check ups! Anything that makes this habit stick is so helpful!