Dental Hygiene is important...

David and I are committed to having good dental hygiene. But we're also very picky about the items we use to achieve healthy, clean smiles. I don't normally consider myself a brand name buyer...there are very few brands for which I have any sort of long-term affinity. I'm generally much more concerned with price and often pass up a so-called "better" brand for one that shaves a few cents off the price. But when it comes to my mouth, I have suddenly become a brand snob, willing to go far and wide to attain the products I love and trust.

David is really at the root of this die-hard devotion to all things natural, organic, and eco-friendly. I was just fine using cheap $2 toothbrushes handed out by dentists or bought on sale at Target and glopping them full of minty Crest. (I think I preferred Crest over Colgate. And I always went for the "whitening" formulas. Lot of good those did.) When I started dating David, he introduced me to Tom's of Maine toothpaste, a small brand of natural personal care items made with no artificial or animal ingredients. I quickly become a devoted fan. It wasn't long before I began to notice small stacks of Tom's products on the bottom shelf of the toothpaste aisle, making company with lines and lines of Crest and Colgate in ordinary grocery stores and superstores like Target (oh how I miss thee....we've been such good friends these last 10 years) and Wal-Mart. But these small contributions are generally only limited to their peppermint and spearmint flavors of toothpaste--good, staple flavors, but generally too strong and too over-powering for my tastes, especially when Tom's has a very extensive list of toothpaste/dental products. Instead, I hunted down wintermint in even greater speciality stores like Bed, Bath, and Beyond (the only place I found that carried it in the metro DC area, besides Whole Foods) and I would walk over a mile to the nearest store just for toothpaste. Wintermint and I were on very good terms until David came to DC for an extended stay in January of this year.

By then, David had moved on from his preferred flavor (cinnamint) because he believed that the mint flavoring and SLS (often used as a foaming agent) poured into toothpastes was causing unwanted affects and he wanted a milder, gentler toothpaste. David then found Tom's of Maine Clean & Gentle Care, SLS-free Antiplaque + Whitening ToothPaste, Fluoride-free naturally foaming toothpaste in cinnamon-clove. According to Tom's:

Our Clean & Gentle Care toothpaste leaves your teeth and mouth feeling clean
and fresh-without using sodium lauryl sulfate. (SLS). SLS foams and disperses
ingredients but for some may cause mouth and gum irritation. Our breakthrough
formula uses the gentle ingredient glycyrrhizin (purified from licorice root)
for natural foaming and xylitol to help soothe a dry mouth.

While the cinnamon-clove always leaves my mouth feeling clean and fresh, its subtle flavor lacks the minty fresh just-brushed-my-teeth-clean that most toothbrushers have come to expect. And though that zesty flavoring is missing, it in no way compromises how wonderful of a product I think it is. I especially love that it contains no fluoride--which isn't as great as we once thought it was. Of course, this toothpaste is even more difficult to find. In DC, the only store that carried the toothpaste was Whole Foods but only the Whole Foods in Old Town Alexandria and not the one in the Adams Morgan neighborhood of DC. Obviously, these were both extremely out of my way, but yet, I would often make the trek there just for my toothpaste. Now in Hawaii, where there are no Whole Foods (sigh), we have to order our toothpaste off from Drugstore.com .

While this is not generally a problem I am quite disgruntled by their services at the present time. I ordered 5 boxes of our preferred toothpaste over 3 weeks ago, and having waiting for the mail expectantly every day--and watching our last remaining tube of toothpaste dwindle to nothing--our shipment never came. (I called and complained twice and they re-sent the order priority mail....hopefully it will get here by Tuesday. Luckily we had an old tube of Tom's cinnamint to see us through.) Now, I wonder why I go through all this trouble when every grocery store and Wal-Mart in America is packed with rows and shelves and nearly full aisles of generic, rubbery, foul-tasting Crest or Colgate products that are cheaper and last longer (per box) than my beloved Tom's in its old-fashioned metal tubes. But now that I've made the switch to a natural, organic, and gentle toothbrushing regiment, I can't bear to go back to that nasty stuff. Call me a snob...I don't care. My teeth are happily and healthier than they've been in years (which is good because I haven't been able to afford to visit a dentist for years).

But it doesn't end there. No, David has also converted me to Preserve eco-friendly toothbrushes made from recycled yogurt cups. Not only are they fun colors, but the 45° curved handle and super soft bristles make for a delightful toothbrushing experiencing. I know I sound like a TV commercial, but these toothbrushes rock.

But that's not all! Preserve is also committed to recycling their already recycled toothbrushes:

When it is time to replace your toothbrush (dentists recommend switching it
every three months) send the toothbrush and case back to Preserve using our postage-paid label to be re-processed into plastic lumber for picnic tables, boardwalks and decks.

So this post totally sounds like an advertisement but it was mostly prompted by my missing toothpaste and why it matters so much to have good toothpaste. Maybe I should go see if the mail has come today.