Meagan Hollman
Dental hygiene is important for good oral health—but you already know that. What you don’t know are these random and quirky dental facts you won’t learn at a Utah dental assisting college.
According to Securian Dental Plans, an insurance provider, the Tooth Fairy pays an average of $2 per tooth.
73% of Americans would rather drive to the grocery store and shop than floss their teeth. Ironically, more students attending a dental assisting college in Utah would rather go to class and learn about flossing than actually do it.
The color of choice for a majority of toothbrush owners? Blue. More people prefer to use blue toothbrushes over red ones.
Speaking of toothbrushes, the average toothbrush has around 2,500 bristles grouped together in about 40 tufts per brush. These tufts are folded, stapled and placed into pre-cored holes in the head of the brush, and finally fused in place with heat. The toothbrush handle is generally made of plastic and rubber and comes in five, comfortably shaped grips: spoon, power, precision, oblique and distal oblique.
Apparently, royalty needs help brushing their teeth. One of Prince Charles’s valet’s sacred duties is to squeeze the prince’s toothpaste onto his brush. If not for him, Prince Charles’s dental hygiene would be atrocious.
In 1994, a jailbird in a West Virginia prison braided floss into a rope, which he used to scale the prison wall and escape. That’s definitely not one of the uses of floss they teach you at a Utah dental assisting college.
There are more than 300 types of bacteria that make up dental plaque. All the more reason to brush three times a day!
According to the Academy of General Dentistry, the average person only brushes for 45 to 70 seconds. The recommended time is two to three minutes.
