It’s one of the first things you do in the morning, and very often the last thing you do before bed. Brush your teeth.
But while you’re brushing back and forth against your pearly pegs, your mind on others things, you’ve probably never stopped to wonder quite how hygenic the toothbrush in your mouth actually is.
Now a dentist has taken to TikTok to reveal the rather disturbing reason he keeps a close eye on the location of his toothbrush.
Giving your teeth a thorough clean twice a day – for two minutes – will help keep them decaying and plaque building up. Experts at Colgate have also recommended that you replace toothbrushes every three to four months.
Following this, dentist Dr Jordan Brown has revealed a disgusting fact about where we naturally store toothbrushes in a video on his TikTok channel.
In the video, with over 120,000 likes, the dentist explained that no matter how spick and span you keep your bathroom, the reason there is a toilet in there is the reason why your toothbrush should be elsewhere.
Dr Brown explains: ‘Everyone needs to know this about their toothbrush. If you can see your toilet and your toothbrush in the same vision without moving your head, there’s a 99 per cent chance you have fecal matter on your toothbrush.
‘Aerosols from your toilet spray up in the air and they get everywhere including on your toothbrush.’
To use a technical term, whenever you flush the loo it causes something called a ‘faecal fountain’.
This sprays microscopic droplets from the toilet bowl all over the surrounding space – and that includes your toothbrush, innocently resting in a glass on the sink.
Therefore, Dr Brown has urged people to close their toilet seat when they flush.
And it is evident that the bedroom is the best place to store your standard or electrical toothbrush.
But if this is too much of a hassle for you, it has been suggested that you can keep your toothbrush clean by keeping it apart from other people’s toothbrushes.
You can also purchase covers to place on the head to keep nasty bacteria way.
And Dr Brown’s video has had over 1,000 comments, as many TikTok users have revealed where they store their toothbrush.
One person wrote: ‘I put mine in the medicine cabinet.’
And another put: ‘My tooth brush has a cover on it and I’m a drawer.’
While a third user said: ‘My toilet and tooth brush r in different rooms.’
Someone else said: ‘I close the lid when I flush so I think I’m good.’
While one disgusting person jokingly put: ‘I dip my tooth brush in the toilet so I think I’m fine.’
And another comedian wrote: ‘That’s why I brush my teeth in the kitchen.’