01/06/2026
✨Celebrate your smile ✨National Smile Month is about celebrating each and every unique smile and focusing on how small habits every day can help protect your teeth.
🦷Looking after your mouth is about more than having nice teeth. It affects daily life in many ways. It can change how people eat, speak and smile. It can also affect confidence and comfort. Small daily habits can make a big difference to your smile, oral health and well-being.
Here are five ways to help keep your smile healthy
🪥Two minutes twice a day - Brushing for two minutes last thing at night and at one other time during the day with a fluoride toothpaste is key to maintaining good oral health.
🦷 Interdental Cleaning/ Flossing - Brushing may come before flossing in the dictionary, but it shouldn’t when it comes to our teeth. Research shows that interdental cleaning before brushing is the best way to clean our teeth effectively.
🫗Spit, don’t rinse with water - After we have brushed our teeth, we should spit out the toothpaste. At this point, we might be tempted to rinse our mouth out with water, but if we do, we’ll be washing away the fluoride, which continues to help protect the teeth.
😀Try a fluoride mouthwash - You can provide a boost to your oral health by using a fluoride mouthwash, as it helps to clear the mouth of debris. If using a mouthwash, this should be done at a different time of day from brushing, so you aren't washing away the fluoride.
🍭Beware of snacking - What we eat can have a big influence on our oral health. Snacking regularly on sugary foods continuously exposes teeth to acid attacks, increasing the risk of tooth decay.
