The One With My Gums and a Posh New Toothbrush

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This post is an entry for Mumsnet Blogger Network Challenge sponsored by Oral-B, promoting healthy gums. Get tips and advice on www.oralb-loveyourgums.com

There's lots of health and well being issues they don't tell you about when you become pregnant. Mostly embarrassing things about going to the loo, or not being able to go to the loo, or not being able to reach when you've been to loo.

Stuff you, unfortunately, have to find out for yourself .

One of the things that never seems to get mentioned is that, during pregnancy, you can develop gum disease. In fact between 50% and 70% of Mums-To-Be experience what the NHS call

“ Hormonal changes during pregnancy, which, can make your gums more vulnerable to plaque, leading to inflammation and bleeding.”

NHS Pregnancy and Gum Disease

Basically gum disease.

And even after pregnancy 1 in 2 of all adults suffer from gum problems, which is the major cause of tooth loss. A frightening thought. As I get older I can get on board with dying my hair to cover the grey, using face cream for my wrinkles and taking cod liver oil for my aching joints but I draw the line at false teeth!

I only found out I had gum disease when I was carrying the boy because I was recommended by my dentist to go and see a hygienist. In my naïvety I wondered why ladies get free dental care when they are expecting.

I was soon to find out why!

Given the state of my gums, which bled when I brushed and were starting to recede in places, the hygienist and dentist were very strict with me about my dental routine in the future. Not just flossing but proper Interdental brushes to get between the teeth, alcohol free mouthwash morning and night and brushing for two minutes with an electric toothbrush.

I have been a good girl since then and kept up the routine but it's easy to let it slip now and again. I know that my 2 minutes was sliding back to more like the average of 42 seconds that adults in the UK spend cleaning their teeth instead.

So when the chance came along to try out the Oral-B Triumph 5000 with SmartGuide I wanted to give it a go. 

The reason being it times your full 2 minutes brushing for you with a whizzy Smart Guide gadget that shows you how long to brush each quarter of your mouth for. 

It also tells you if you are pressing too hard on your teeth and gums and adjusts the speed and pressure accordingly by using the Triple Action Pressure Control System.

It's the gaps between my teeth that capture food particles and cause plaque but this brush gives a really deep clean and gets in all those hard to reach places.

Over the last two weeks I've been using the Oral-B FlossAction brush head, one of the three brush heads the toothbrush comes with, along with Oral B Pro Expert Premium Gum Protection toothpaste, and I've been noticing a much deeper clean on my teeth and fresher feeling in my mouth, especially in the mornings. Always good when you've been up all night with grumpy 3 year old who's full of cold.

Although my boy is too young to use this brush at the moment he loves the smiley face on the Smart Guide and older children are going to be encouraged to brush for longer because of it too.

There's 5 brushing modes so you can choose what you need, when you need it. After all your teeth don't feel the same everyday, it depends on what you've been doing, eating or drinking. I've been using the daily clean mode mostly but there's a deep clean which gives you a 3 minute brushing time, which is good for a weekly cleanse. Then there's a sensitive setting for when it's been one of those days and your mouth feels like it's done ten rounds with Amir Khan. There's a massage mode for the gum equivalent of a back rub with some soft lights and sweet music and finally a whitening setting for those nights when you've

been on red wine with dinner followed by a coffee, gone to the bathroom looked in the mirror and frightened yourself because your teeth were grey?

All in all this is an amazing piece of kit. It's a pretty hefty investment to buy it in the first place but the whole family can have their own brush head, with you all using the one main base unit, so you only need to buy this and not a separate electric toothbrush each.

The brushes last 3 months so a pack of 4 for £17 will last you the year and makes each one £4.25, which is more than I'd pay for a toothbrush but then you are getting a much better clean than a manual brush. It feels like it does when my hygienist has done my clean and polish and given me a pat on the back for keeping up my regime.

When I saw her in September she told me I no longer showed signs of gum disease. My persistence had worked and I had stopped my gums receding. I was delighted but it had taken nearly 4 years of hard work to stop the rot, as it were, and put a smile on my and her face.

Now I've got my Oral-B Triumph 5000 with SmartGuide smiling at me every morning and evening my hygienist will be smiling even more the next time I see her.

The One with The Mental Health

When it comes to health I always find there are two topics that send people scuttling away into a corner of embarrassment. One is sexual health and the other is mental! 

Mental, mental chicken oriental.

Mental. That's mental! You're mental you are!

Insults hurled across playgrounds, and some places of work, since time began.

Will we ever get rid of the stigma of "mental health"?

October is mental health month. We all have mental health but we rarely think about it or consider it. It's just there.

Until it goes wrong.

In exactly the same way we don't always consider aspects of our physical health, until something hurts or twinges.

Or breaks.

In the depths of the various levels of depression I have experienced over the years there have been times when I have felt broken. Physically and mentally broken.

In pieces. 

Telling a person with depression or mental health issues to "pull themselves together" is no more useful or constructive than telling a person with a broken leg to "get up and walk you lazy cow"!

You have to let things heal before they can strengthen and that healing can involve all kinds of different things, including taking pills. 

If I took a tablet everyday for blood pressure or thyroid who'd bat an eyelid? Why is taking medication for a mental health issue any different or more embarrassing than taking one for a physical health issue?

Yet it is, isn't it? Or maybe it was? 


In recent months I have posted two Facebook statuses on my depression and the medication I take for it. The responses have blown me away. Not only have people been supportive but they have shared their own mental health issues and if they take medication too.

As I tell the boy on a daily basis "It's fun to share!"

And you know what, it has been. Telling people I have depression and I take medication for it has been one of the most liberating things I've ever done.

I refuse to hide in a corner. So I talk about it. Because talking about it helps me heal and it, hopefully, stops the rest of the world being embarrassed and treating mental health as something we don't mention. 

Because that's just mental, isn't it!