Hi bunnies!

I have a wonderful oral care regimen that keeps my teeth white and my gums healthy, so I figured I’d share it with all of you! It’s not cheap, but it is easy and very effective.

You just need two simple things for natually white teeth and healthy:

How to Get Naturally White Teeth and Fight Gum Disease

1. Get Thee an Electric Toothbrush

A good quality electric toothbrush will change your life. I am personally a fan of the Phillips Sonicare toothbrush, I have the Easy Clean model, which is $69.95 on Amazon (there’s a coupon right now for additional $10 off – just “clip and save” under the listed price).

Say hello to your new best friend

The reason I love this model is because it’s compatible with the fancy Diamond Clean brush heads – so you can get the toothbrush for a somewhat affordable price but get the cleaning power of the high-end brush heads.

Different models have different settings, but the standard setting is 30 seconds for each section of your mouth (front right, front left, back right, back left), for a two minute total cleaning time. The brush heads are small, allowing you to fully reach hard-to-clean places like the back of your teeth. The pulsation and the brush heads stimulate your gums, as well, and clean the gumline, which helps quite a bit with gingivitis and other gum-health issues. The pulsating brush head breaks apart gunk on your teeth, which gives you a much deeper clean than a standard toothbrush.

You can of course get a different electric toothbrush (this Oral-B Healthy Clean + Floss Action model would be a great choice, and it currently has a $7 off coupon as well), I just have the Sonicare so am able to vouch for it personally. Whatever you choose to purchase, just make sure to do your research by searching for “electric toothbrush” on Amazon and reading the reviews to make a decision! I would recommend against the super expensive models, all they offer is different timing options for brushing that I guarantee you’ll never use.

Once you brush your teeth with a good electric toothbrush, you won’t be able to go back to analog. From the first brushing your teeth will feel impossibly clean.

2. Swish with Brushing Rinse

I discovered Brushing Rinse at the L.A. Green Festival in 2013 and have never looked back. It’s simply a mixture of hydrogen peroxide, essential oils, and filtered water. You could probably make it yourself for cheaper, but I love this product and am happy to support the company. I usually buy Brushing Rinse in bulk from Amazon. Because I use it everyday, I go through about a bottle a month.

Oral Lightning in a Bottle!

Brushing Rinse is used in place of toothpaste and it’s a totally different experience: you swish with the rinse for 30 seconds, and then you brush your teeth with it. The peroxide, along with the essential oils, kills the bad bacteria in your mouth, gets into your gumline, and removes stains. My teeth are naturally pretty white and whitening was not something I was trying to get from this product, but I saw a half shade whiter within a couple weeks and a full shade whiter within a couple months. For someone with less white teeth, the results would likely be more dramatic.

You can also drip a few drops on your teeth before flossing, to really get the Brushing Rinse into those hard-to-reach places and make flossing even more effective.

Summary
Using an electric toothbrush and Brushing Rinse (or another food grade hydrogen peroxide concoction) you can get sparkly white teeth, happy healthy gums without the use of harsh chemicals or nasty additives.

These are my teeth – naturally whitened!

Affordable, Easy Home Remedies for White Teeth and Gum Disease

If you don’t want to go the expensive electric toothbrush and fancy rinse route, there are home remedies you can do cheaply and easily for whiter teeth and healthier gums:

• Eat hard, crunchy vegetables – veggies like celery and carrots are nature’s toothbrushes! The hardness of the veggies and fiber helps to clean your teeth, and the chewing can make your jaw stronger, something modern humans lack.
• Avoid processed foods, sugar and additives – people don’t realize that before we had so many additives and preservatives in our food, our teeth were bright white without brushing, and certainly without bleaching! Modern food is what makes our teeth dingy and cavity-ridden, so the closer you can eat to the earth, the better. Try cutting out processed food as much as possible, you’ll see vast improvements in your teeth AND your overall health.
• If you can’t afford the Brushing Rinse and don’t want to bother with all the essential oils to make your own, rinsing with plain ol’ food grade hydrogen peroxide can still work wonders. I have a friend at work who started doing this and her chronic gum issues have completely cleared up. Just make sure to use 1-3% peroxide (typically, the stuff in the brown bottle that you can find almost anywhere). You can swish with the straight peroxide or, if you find it too harsh, you can cut it with some water. Try to keep it at at least 1% for it to be effective – so if you buy 3%, you can do one part peroxide to two parts water. Rinse after brushing and flossing for best results. Do this daily, or at least a few times a week and you’ll see great improvements after a couple weeks! Some people use peroxide in their Waterpik to really get into their gums, though I’ve read you shouldn’t do stronger than 1.5% for this (so, one part 3%, one part water)
• If you’re feeling DIY-crazy, you can make a paste of hydrogen peroxide and baking soda and brush with this once a week. It’s kind of like chewing on a towel *shudders* but it’s extremely effective for whitening and oral health.
• Oil pulling! By swishing a tablespoon or so of oil around in your mouth (typically sesame or coconut oil, but I hear pretty much any oil will do) for 15-20 minutes, you can pull all the bad bacteria out of your mouth. I did this for a time with great results and I have a ton of friends who swear by it. Don’t swallow the oil, make sure to spit it all out and rinse your mouth with water after to avoid consuming all that bacteria you just pulled out, and make sure to spit it in the trash, not the sink, or else it can clog your pipes.

Enjoy your sparkly smiles!!!