Selecting the best toothpaste alternatives can come down to personal taste, though your reasons for avoiding traditional forms of toothpaste should also be considered. If your main reason for examining toothpaste alternatives is to avoid substances such as fluoride, then a toothpaste made with natural ingredients may suit your purposes. There are also a number of other commercially produced alternatives to toothpaste, in addition to substances you can use to make dentifrice at home. Tooth soap is one option that is available in both flake and liquid form, and you might want to consider it if you want an alternative that is easy to use. Mixing together baking soda, salt, and hydrogen peroxide can also result in a good homemade dentifrice, though simply brushing with nothing, but water is an alternative as well.
Toothpaste is a type of dentifrice that is designed for use with a toothbrush to remove plaque and food particles from the teeth. Most toothpastes contain a variety of different ingredients, each of which falls into categories such as foaming agents, abrasive materials, and fluorides. Foaming agents can help distribute toothpaste throughout the mouth, abrasives are useful in removing plaque, and fluorides are typically intended to prevent gum disease. If you find any of these substances undesirable, or you simply like to produce your own household products to save money, then you may be interested in toothpaste alternatives.
Most of the actual cleaning action that takes place during the brushing of teeth is the result of the brush, not the toothpaste. That means one of the simplest toothpaste alternatives is to just to leave the toothpaste out. You can then brush and floss normally, which should remove most of the food and plaque on your teeth. If you prefer to use some type of commercially produced dentifrice, you might want to try tooth soap or powder. These products are designed to not taste like soap, and typically lack substances such as fluoride and sodium lauryl sulfate (SLS) that you may be trying to avoid.
There are also a number of toothpaste alternatives that you can make out of substances that may already be in your home. One option is to simply dip your toothbrush in salt or baking soda, though a paste of baking soda, salt, and hydrogen peroxide can be a suitable dentifrice. If you dislike the flavor of baking soda and peroxide, mixing in some peppermint or wintergreen oil may help. Another alternative ingredient to consider is xylitol, which is a natural sugar alcohol that can act as a substitute for fluoride by fighting gum disease; this ingredient is commonly used in sugar-free chewing gums, and there have been some suggestions that chewing these gums, in combination with brushing might be beneficial.
