Get rid of plaque, improve your dental health with Crest Spinbrush Classic
Written: Nov 20 '04 (Updated Nov 20 '04)
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Ease of use, great results that reduce the time spent at the dentist.
Cons: None
The Bottom Line: We all want healthy teeth. Go to the dentist twice a year and brush regularly with Crest Spinbrush Classic and you'll have whiter, healthier teeth.
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| alexdg1's Full Review: Crest Spinbrush Classic |
Dental health, as everyone knows, is one of the most important aspects of both hygiene and overall health. We all know how attractive a set of healthy white teeth looks on a person; no one relishes kissing someone with dirty-looking teeth, right? Even more important, tooth-and-gum disease can cause even more serious health problems, so it's not enough just to going to the dentist twice a year for the checkup-and-cleaning routine most of us dread; brushing and flossing at least twice a day is an important part of maintaining good dental health.
The centerpiece of dental hygiene has been, of course, the humble toothbrush, and over the 40 years or so that I've been brushing my teeth (including the times when Mom brushed them for me when I was a toddler) that simple instrument has changed in look and styles.
First, of course, there was the straight handled toothbrush with which most baby boomers and the preceding generations grew up. Simple and inexpensive, the only variety was in the color of the handle and or the bristles. It was great for brushing the front upper and lower teeth, but its lack of an angular shape made it hard to reach the back teeth. As good as I was about brushing my teeth as a child, the old straight-handled brushes just didn't reach some parts of the hard-to-reach areas; consequently, the few cavities I did get as a boy were located there.
In the late 1970s (as far as I can recollect), electric toothbrushes were available, but they were often expensive and Mom wasn't too sure about their quality anyway, so we made do with the ol' straight-handled brushes until someone came up with a toothbrush called Reach.
Reach's then-unique approach was to mimic dental instruments such as the mirror hygienists and dentists use to look at patients' teeth. They are mostly straight-handled until a third of the way up to the tip, where it is angled slightly so it can reach those pesky (but oh-so-necessary!) back teeth. The research-and-development folks at Oral-B and elsewhere figured out that this design feature would be neat to have on a toothbrush, and sometime in the early 1980s the Reach toothbrush was introduced. Soon, many other toothbrush manufacturers were making angle-handled toothbrushes, and though they were slightly more expensive, they grew fruitful and multiplied.
At the same time, the battery-operated toothbrush also gained popularity, with some dentists (like mine) selling really expensive models (with NiCad rechargeable batteries and all kinds of adjustable heads) for $80 and up. My older sister Vicky bought one like that for my mom and me (there were, of course, different brush-heads for each of us) in 1987; the spinning heads and softer bristles were more efficient and gentler on teeth and gums, but the NiCad battery eventually wore out and it wasn't replaceable. Back to Reach and Reach-clone toothbrushes we went...and although we did maintain our teeth relatively well, the twice-a-year sessions with the oral hygienist were seemingly endless. After all, the battery-operated 'brushes spun their rotating heads at high amounts of revolutions per minute; the human hand can only do so much, and never at 100 RPM or more!
Enter Crest Spinbrush Classic, a well-crafted battery operated dental cleaning implement that can do the same thorough job on teeth as the more expensive electric toothbrush models, but at a fraction of the cost and without the hassles of rechargeable batteries. (We get ours at Publix or Winn-Dixie supermarkets for less than $10.00, though I have found Spinbrush models that go for $4.99 at Wal-Mart.)
Like all successful tools, the Spinbrush has thrived in the fiercely competitive dental hygiene market because it's elegantly simple in design and magnificently reliable. Its handle is a smooth plastic cylinder that tapers off at the removable and replaceable "brush head." To activate it, there is only one On/Off switch; there are no fancy speed adjustment levels or anything complicated, just press the switch forward for on and backward for off. The head itself is a combination of a conventional brush with a rotating cleaning "bit" that spins remarkably fast when the batteries are fresh. Obviously, the fresher the two AA batteries are the faster it will spin, but even after three or four months of twice-daily five-minute brushing sessions, the Crest Spinbrush Classic will leave your teeth feeling fresh and definitely cleaner than they'd be after a brushing session with a conventional Reach manual toothbrush. The battery hatch is a bit tricky, but with a gentle twist and tug, you open it, take out the old batteries and replace them with fresh ones. Nothing could be easier.
The heads -- you have to replace them every three months or so -- are also very gentle on gums, particularly sensitive ones that would otherwise be sore with old-fashioned toothbrushes, and the Reach-like angled design of the brushing element allows you to get to the hard-to-get teeth in back.
To use Crest Spinbrush Classic couldn't be easier, either. Simply apply your favorite toothpaste on the head, switch the toothbrush on, and brush each tooth with gentle up-and-down strokes as you would with a manual toothbrush; just let the spinning head linger on the enamel a tad while you move the Spinbrush along your teeth and gums.
While regular use of the Crest Spinbrush Classic doesn't eliminate going to see the oral hygienist every six months, it can, if used properly, reduce the time you spend on that dreaded "chair." In my pre-1999 Reach or Oral-B toothbrush days, a typical cleaning would eat up around 30 minutes or so of my visit, especially when my cute (but married) hygienist was doing the bottom half of my back teeth. While it was very pleasant looking into her very nice hazel eyes, it was less pleasant when she had to scrape a particularly stubborn patch of plaque from a tooth. Now, while she still finds a couple of trouble spots here and there, my sessions last about 15 minutes, and I get nice compliments on my brushing and flossing.
Although we only use the Classic models, Crest does have various kid-friendly designs and color schemes.
Recommended:
Yes
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Epinions.com ID:
alexdg1
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Member: Alex Diaz-Granados
Location: Miami, FL USA
Reviews written: 1279
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About Me:
Rest in Peace, Mrs. Barbara Axler Fields. I will miss you lots!
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