20 March 2017

In aid of World Oral Health Day today the UK's leading dental charity, the Oral Health Foundation, have looked at just how long we spend brushing our teeth during our lives with some amazing findings.

The charity has discovered that, with the UK's average life expectancy currently standing at 81.5 years, if a person brushes their teeth for two minutes twice a day over the course of their life it would equate to 118,990 minutes - the equivalent of 1,983.16 hours or slightly more than 82 days.

In the sporting areana the charity have worked out that you could play more than 1,322 football matches or 1,487 rugby matches, or even sit through 16 five-day cricket test matches.

They also found that you could watch all of the current 60 episodes of Game of Thrones a whopping 33 times each, or the whole run of 236 episodes of Friends 22.9 times or even the whole Lord of the Rings trilogy a huge 192.8 times.

By releasing these statistics, the charity is hoping to draw attention to just how important our oral health is and make people realise how much time they should be dedicating to looking after their mouths.

Dr Nigel Carter said: "From experience, in reality we know that a lot of people do not always spend two minutes twice a day, every day, brushing their teeth. But our message is simple, you should be!

"The health of our mouth is so incredibly vital, from eating, drinking, speaking and even breathing a problem with our oral health can seriously impact our quality of life and by making sure we spend a relatively small amount of time looking after it every day we can have a big impact on our health.

"World Oral Health Day is an excellent opportunity for people to find out a little bit more about looking after their oral health and I encourage everybody to think about how important their mouths are and consider if they are doing enough to look after theirs."

The Oral Health Foundation want to draw attention to the shocking statistic that more than 40,000 children have had teeth removed under general anaesthetic in hospitals within the last year alone due to tooth decay.

They are hoping that by making people more aware of what we need to do to look after our oral health we can help to reverse this shameful statistic.

The charity is determined to get people to understand that almost every single one of these cases is entirely preventable, and that by following three simple rules of oral health they can make a huge difference: Brush your teeth last thing at night and at least one other time during the day, with a fluoride toothpaste, cut down on how often you have sugary foods and drinks, visit the dentist regularly, as often as they recommend.

Bizarre Dental Facts

• The enamel on the top surface on your tooth is the hardest part of your entire body.

• In the first adult dental health survey in 1968 over one third of the population (37%) had no natural teeth - it is now about 6% of adults.

• More than one in ten (14%) of people find cleaning the toilet more appealing than flossing every day.

• The average person produces over 5,000 gallons of saliva in a lifetime - that's enough to fill 78 bathtubs.

• Our ‘smile comes top of the things we first notice when meeting a new person.

• A toothbrush came top of the list of things we could not do without when we go on holiday.

• If we only had five minutes to get ready in the morning, one in twenty would skip brushing our teeth.