Few things could be as easy as cleaning your teeth – or so you’d think.
Apply toothpaste to brush, stick brush in mouth, give the old pearly whites a good scrub, then rinse.
It seems, however, that many of us are not doing it properly, for example not spending long enough on the task or brushing too hard.
Now help is at hand for the problem you never knew existed, in the unlikely shape of your smartphone.
Dental hygiene company Oral-B has invented a toothbrush that sends information to your phone as you brush.
Your phone then displays messages that tell you how you’re doing and suggesting improvements.
The SmartSeries electric brush links to your iPhone or Android device via Bluetooth wireless technology, with an app allowing you to follow instructions on the screen.
If you brush too hard, the phone receives signals from the brush and displays an alert to prevent you from damaging your gums.
The phone also times your brush using a virtual stopwatch – experts say many of us do not brush for the recommended two minutes.
At the end of the session, the smartphone displays a summary of how well you brushed your teeth – with tips on what you could do better next time. The app can even be personalised with the help of a dentist, who may advise a user to pay more attention to certain areas of the mouth.
Manufacturer Procter & Gamble launched the £199 brush this week and it is expected to go on sale in Britain in June.
An Oral-B spokesman said: ‘Dentists always tell us, “People do a great job in the week before they come to visit us and in the week after they visit us. But nothing can hide the fact that when we look inside the mouth we can see all the areas they miss”.
You reached your goal! A graphic showing some of the features of the smart toothbrush
The app, which will be available for free on iPhone and Android phones, also tells the user how many seconds to spend cleaning each part of the mouth, displaying a graphic with different teeth highlighted during the clean.
You can programme it to six modes which alter the motion of the brush – daily cleaning, deep clean, whitening, gum care, sensitive, or tongue cleaning.
The app also stores your data so you can view your brushing habits in a graph by day, week or month, said to be useful for parents who want to monitor their children’s brushing.
When it’s time to visit the dentist, the app will display an alert and a list of surgeries in the user’s area.
Perhaps inevitably, there is even a way to share your brushing achievements on Facebook using the ‘trophy’ option.
And because many people get bored while brushing, the app has a feature which allows the user to watch the news.
In tests, the app extended average brushing times from less than a minute for a manual toothbrush to two minutes and 16 seconds, according to the manufacturer.
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