NOTE: This article is a contribution and do not necessarily represent the views of IBTimes.
I have a confession to make: I visit the dentist much less than I ought to. But every time I did go, I was told my teeth are in great condition. So imagine my shock when I was told by my dentist one day that my brushing technique for the last 30 years was all wrong. She showed me that the right way to clean my teeth was to hold the brush at a 45 degree angle, and I was to draw a circle on each face of the tooth for 5 seconds. This is also known as the Bass method.
After doing this manually for a while, I did end up investing in an electric toothbrush which motorizes the process, and that did make it easier. However, to get a thorough clean, it still takes quite a bit of maneuvering, and it leaves me wondering if I was consistent each day, and if there are spots that I habitually miss.
It turns out that there are people working on this very issue: meet the French company Y-Brush, who is showcasing their toothbrushing solution at the CES 2023. Can this become the future of toothbrushing? Let's dive in to find out.
Unchanged for Hundreds of Years
I've always known that the umbrella a few hundreds years ago looked almost exactly the same as the umbrellas of today, but it never hit me that the tooth brush hasn't changed much either. In an era
where we can put rovers on Mars, and a space telescope a million miles away, it's surprising how primitively we clean our teeth.
Then again, given how underdeveloped our tool is, it's no surprise that in order to get all 32 of our adult tooths clean, we need to master some complicated technique. This is what the makers of the Y-Brush believed that they could change: to design and produce a toothbrush that is more sophisticated, so that the technique doesn't need to be.
Goodbye to 'I' and Hello to 'Y'
The profile of the Y-Brush is more like a mouth guard more than anything else, but it's different in that it has bristles filling up its channel ways. The idea is simple: instead of maneuvering a half inch brush around a complicated 3D 'U' shape, why not make a brush in a complicated 3D 'U' shape so that maneuvering is barely needed?
Just like a mouth guard, the Y-Brush is soft and pliable enough to fit around a wide variety of jaw shapes. To suit more people, it also comes in two sizes: S for children 4 to 12 years old or an M for adults.
Sonic Motion Replacing Circular Motion
For those who learned to brush their teeth using the Bass method, you'll know how important it is to make small circular motions instead of an up-down or left-right motion. But that's exactly it: it's a learned behavior. What if you didn't learn it well, or wasn't taught well in the first place?
The Y-Brush on the other hand takes the hand motion out of the equation as it uses vibration to remove plaque. All there is left for the user to do is to shift the brush slightly from left to right, making sure the extremities on either side of the jaw is reached.
Since technique is out of the equation, consistency is easily attainable. With the Y-Brush the brushing routine, reached area, strength and time are all guaranteed to be the same each time.
10 Second Teeth Brushing
With the bristles slanting at a 45 degree angle, and the vertical movement vibration - all elements of the Bass technique (Angled bristle and vertical flick), placed in the 'U' profile and 35,000 bristles that brush all the teeth simultaneously, the same brushing process becomes significantly shorter.
Amazingly, the Y-Brush, with its unique design is able to do an equally good job as a standard 2 minute brush using the Bass technique in just 10 seconds: 5 seconds on the top teeth, then 5 seconds on the bottom. That is astoundingly fast, less than 1/10th of the standard time.
What's even more interesting, is that each tooth is actually getting brushed for longer, since for the entire 5 seconds, each tooth is being brushed - as opposed to only being able to spend a couple seconds on each area of the teeth with conventional brushes.
Final Verdict
It could be that the humble toothbrush is not the most exciting thing to innovate on. Something as mundane as brushing your teeth in the morning and after meals is something that everyone has done since we can remember, accepting it merely a part of life. But the people at Y-Brush have put in the thoughts and the innovation and may have changed toothbrushing forever.
The Y-Brush may look daunting at first, but what it promises is worth the risk: a 10 second tooth brushing process that has a very little learning curve, and a consistent cleaning every time. It's a risk that's worth taking and might change your daily routines forever. We're awarding the Y-Brush with the IBTimes Best of CES 2023 badge.
Now if someone would quickly invent a 10 second face washing machine, I'd be eternally, or rather, daily grateful.
CES 2023
