You go to see your dentist regularly. You are consistent and through about brushing and taking care of your teeth at home BUT : Are your gums receding, do you see more of your tooth? Are your teeth more sensitive than they ever were? Are your teeth more darker or yellow than they have been? If you have noticed any of the symptoms you may be brushing too hard or using the wrong kind of tooth brush.

The biggest misconception about tooth brushes is that the harder the brush the better - it will clean better. There are two things you do when you brush your teeth:

1. Clean the teeth by removing soft buildup from the teeth
2. Massage the gums.

Keeping these two things in mind, a soft tooth brush has to be your choice. The build up you want to remove is soft for about 24-48 hours only and once it starts getting hard from the deposit of calcium from your saliva no hard toothbrush will be able to remove it. On the contrary a hard toothbrush will irritate the gums and cause them to move away from the teeth causing the tooth to look long or recede. You will also be removing the surface of the tooth, just as your kitchen floor shows ware after years of scrubbing and cleaning so will your teeth. This will cause your teeth to look yellower or darker.

The receding of the gums will expose the root part of your tooth in the mouth. This part is not as hard as your regular tooth and will ware off faster and expose the nerve from inside and make the teeth sensitive.

Massaging your gums is exercise for your gums:

Now for the second part of the brushing the massaging of your gums. Just like any part of your body or muscles in your body, your gums need blood supply. When the gums get irritated your body will send blood to fight the irritation but without any movement in the gums (your massaging with the tooth brush) the blood tends to pool in the gums making them swell. This will make the gums bleed when you touch them.

One more aspect about your tooth brush you need to look at is the size of your tooth brush. A narrow tip at the head of the tooth brush will allow your better acces to all your teeth, especially if you still have your wisdom teeth. Now for the question of hand held tooth brush v/s machanical. Which one do you think is good. Both as long as you can do the two things that you need to do with your tooth brush. A mechanical - battery operated or electric will do a consistent job, also has a bigger handle that is easy to hold and use.

So the best choice should be a soft, narrow tip head tooth brush. Not to scrub back and forth when brushing, but instead massaging the gums. Some manufacturers now even have auto stopping mechanical tooth brushes which stop if you put more than necessary pressure while brushing. Stop the damage you may be causing to your teeth and get healthy.