You would think, since I talk about plaque a lot, its the cause of most, if not all of the dental problems I talk about, and very much might be ‘the root of all evil’, that it should’ve been my first blog** BUT that’s not exactly how things worked out. So in a Christopher Nolan, Memento kind of way I’m writing about it now. This is mostly because I talk about it and make many references to it in my blogs all the time, but also because now, more than ever, YOU need to know about plaque. You need to know what it is, how it forms, how you get rid of it and what happens if you don’t, because at the moment the ball is very much in your court when it comes to your dental health.

Lets start at the beginning with the obvious, what is plaque?

Plaque, or biofilm as we now refer to it as in the dental world, are loads of tiny bacteria that are hanging out in a layer of slime, at your gum line. Gross. It will start to build up 30 mins after you eat, drink, or brush.

I like to imagine that these bacteria have broken into your garden, got into a hot tub and are having a party. I feel this is going to turn into one of those 7 o’clock, Tom Hardy type story things so if you would like to imagine him, or any of your other favourites reading this to you please feel free.

The plaque bacteria are having the time of their lives, you would be too if you got to eat and drink all day while sitting in a hot tub, so they don’t want to move. If you get in early enough, its pretty easy to break up this party, there’s not that many of them and they haven’t got too comfortable yet.

The longer they hang out in the garden though, the more comfortable they get and the more friends they invite to the party. Everyone starts to release something called endotoxins these endotoxins turn up the music and things get crazy. The original bacteria who have broken in, the ring leaders, are protected by the whole gang the centre of the hot tub and they are loving life. The endotoxins are a bit too mouthy and rowdy and your body starts to notice, so what does it do? It sends the police round. Still with me?

Now the police come round in the form of

more blood to the area, so you might notice some bleeding
swelling & tenderness
white blood cells which like to eat bacteria

All of these things try to move the plaque on and out of the garden. The original bacteria in the biofilm have all been pulled to the centre of the garden, they’re surrounded and protected by new bacteria and endotoxins, they keep partying away, they don’t care about the police, they continue eating and drinking in the hot tub.

All the police can do is give them a caution and stay outside the garden, they can’t prove they shouldn’t be there. Its a stand off. Some stand offs can last for months, even years - if this happens your gums can start to look really dark red even purple in colour.

Over time, many police forces will come and try to break up the bacteria party. They cause so much damage to the area around the garden that they eventually cause Gum Disease. They can stamp on the ground outside so much that it ruins the foundations around the house (your tooth) and the house falls down. Sometimes the bacteria will run out of food at the party so they break into the house, eating through your tooth causing a cavity, which again the ‘police’ can do nothing about.

You can check if a plaque party is happening in your mouth with some disclosing tablets, the darker the plaque, the more hard core the party.

Plaque biofilm is very very resistant to the ‘police’ as we’ve seen above. Once plaque has established itself at your gum line and got its feet under the table there’s not much your body can do to help, even though it would really like to and tries its best. Even when you bring in the ‘a-bomb’ in the form of an antibacterial mouthwash, it might pick off a few on the outside but those original bacteria will always be pulled to the middle and protected. This is why we can’t rely on mouthwashes alone to deal with gum problems.

The only thing this plaque biofilm WASN’T counting on when they started the party was an earthquake. LABRINTH COME IN!!!

The earthquake physically shaking things up, rearranging the bacteria in the biofilm, breaking up the bacteria ring leaders and taking them away. It breaks up the party. That earthquake is you.

How can we do this? The answer is brushing and flossing.

If you’ve read my blogs before (mwah thankyou for coming back) you’ve def heard this before, but you should be following a gold standard oral hygiene routine at home which includes:

Using something to clean in between your teeth at least once daily. You can find out more about interdental cleaning in my blog post here.
Cleaning your tongue with a tongue scraper of similar at least once a day to keep the bacteria in your mouth as low as possible.
Using an electric toothbrush like the Oral B Genius 9000 * or the Curaprox 5460 Ultra Soft manual toothbrush * twice a day, timed for 2 minutes using a timer, angling 45 degrees towards your gum line, using the correct technique - I will leave a couple of videos on this post so you can check.
With a fluoride toothpaste that meets your needs. You can find out more about my favourite toothpastes here.
Using a single tufted brush for those hard to reach areas if you need to. You can read more about these here.

This. Is. The. Earthquake.

Now ideally we want the earthquake to happen before the police are called in, but if the police are already there they will disperse over time once they realise the party is over., it might just take a while. This means that even after you get rid of the plaque there might still be bleeding, swelling and tenderness. Sometimes the earthquake won’t register too high on the Richter scale on you need to call in the professional earthquake, which is ME or your own Dental Hygienist but you can absolutely shake things up A LOT on your own. Welcome to the major earthquake zone.

Hopefully you enjoyed this and it made sense to you, I’ve maybe gone a bit lockdown mad, but the main thing I hope you’ll take away from this is:

Plaque will form 30 mins after you eat, drink, or brush
Your body, try as it might, can’t really help you with your plaque situation

Mouthwash won’t cut it, its not a quick fix.
You need to have a gold standard oral hygiene routine like we talked about above and you need to do this everyday.

Plaque needs to be CLEANED AWAY. Everyday. You need an earthquake.

* gifted products

** My first blog was actually about bees & gum health and if you’re interested you can check it out here.