Oral stuff

Now listen. Don’t go getting yourself all excited. This post is not about THAT oral stuff. Keep your minds out of the gutter. The oral stuff I want to talk about has to do with your teeth and gums. Not nearly as exciting, I know, but important nonetheless.

Did you know that that periodontal (gum) disease may be a risk factor in heart disease, stroke, bronchopneumonia and premature or low birth rate babies? And did you further know that periodontal diseases are caused by a buildup of plaque and tartar?

Plaque is a disgusting build up of germs that sticks to your teeth and gums and then makes acid from the sugar and starches you eat. And those acids keep pounding away at your teeth for 20 minutes after you eat. That’s how you get cavities. Repeated attacks of acid.

If you don’t get rid of the plaque with regular brushing AND flossing, it hardens and then turns into tartar and infects your gums, causing redness and easy bleeding.

As you know, a bad dental experience kept me away from ANY dentist for seven years. And even though I always brush twice daily, I was a sporadic flosser. If I did it twice a week, I thought I was doing pretty well.

So it was not a big surprise to me when I finally worked up the courage to go back to the dentist to find that I did in fact have gum disease. Ick.

When you have gum disease, the hygienist likes to do a deep cleaning of your teeth (a process with the awful-sounding name of root planing and scaling) in four separate appointments – one for each quadrant of your mouth. Cost? $1000. Crikey!

So when the brave hygienist took a look in my mouth, she cleaned off some of the tartar at the gum line and then told me she would put me “on probation” for four weeks to see if I could improve it a little on my own and save some money on the deep cleaning.

When I got home, I turned on QVC (as is my habit when I’m depressed) and what do you think they were presenting? A little product called Oraparx – an at-home system that they claimed would bust up the plaque not only on your teeth, but even below the gum line. I took this as a sign and immediately ordered it. For under $20, I didn’t think I had much to lose.

Basically, this system consists of a tube of a toothpaste-like substance (which I suspect is mostly baking soda and hydrogen peroxide) and a foam rubber mouth tray. You fill the tray on both sides with the paste, put it in your mouth and leave it in for at least 10 minutes, but not more than 20. I use it while I’m in the shower; the timing works out perfectly.

You would normally use it only once a week or so – less if your teeth look like this:

And perhaps significantly more often if they look like this:


Being somewhere between the two, I used it for seven days straight and then every other day until my return dental appointment. The end result was that I only had to have the deep cleaning on 3 teeth – I had managed to clean the rest of them enough that they didn’t need them. And I saved $750. Pretty impressive, I thought.

I immediately went to the Oraparx website and got into their auto-delivery plan and continued to use it two to three times per week. And when I went back for my 3-month cleaning (which is another thing they make you do if you have periodontal disease), the hygienist said the improvement in my gums was “practically unheard of”.

So if you haven’t been to the dentist in a while, or if you are one of those people who have a lot of plaque build up for no good reason, or if you just want to improve on your oral health, seriously…get this stuff. I highly recommend it. Your gums will thank you.

I had some more to tell you – about a cheap, cheap teeth-whitening product, but this is too long already so I’ll save it for another time.