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Recently in Salon Health & Body

Eating germs
Our semi-sterile lives may be too much of a good thing. Now scientists are inventing "dirty" therapies to remedy our dangerous cleanliness. This is the second of two parts.
By Susan McCarthy
[05/04/00]

Urge: Naked World
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[05/04/00]

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The women of a tribe in the Amazon jungle breast-feed small primates and other animals.
By Jack Boulware
[05/03/00]

Talking dirty
Bring on the germs. Too much cleanliness may be making some people sick. First of two parts.
By Susan McCarthy
[05/03/00]

Urge: Naked World
A royal trap
The former Miss Topless Belgium and others are sentenced for setting up Princess Stephanie's hubby with a tryst that ended their marriage.
By Jack Boulware
[05/02/00]

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But we were going to find out. Dave and Maisie led me into a room with a row of bathroom sinks with one-way mirrors that allow toothbrush researchers to spy on people while they perform oral care on themselves. They gave me a CrossAction toothbrush and disappeared around the wall into the viewing room. At home that night when I brushed my teeth, I had to fight an impulse to open the medicine cabinet to be sure Dave and Maisie weren't in there.

As it turned out, I am power gripper, with periodic forays into oblique and distal oblique gripping. Oral-B identified the five major grip styles of American tooth brushers, and then designed their toothbrush to fit them. Should you care to know what these grip styles are, you can log onto the CrossAction online news bureau. Here you will also learn that Neil Armstrong brushed his teeth with an Oral-B toothbrush minutes before stepping onto the moon, and that the average person brushes his or her teeth for 46 seconds, despite constant nagging from dentists to spend a full two minutes at it. Maisie said that out of 160 people that Oral-B observed tooth brushing, only one brushed for two minutes. We shook our heads. If they can send an Oral-B toothbrush to the moon, why can't they build a man who knows how to brush his teeth?

Mary Roach Mary Roach's column appears in Salon Health & Body every other Friday. + Biography + Archives

Dave and Maisie asked me how I felt about my brushing experience with the CrossAction. I told them that my mouth felt really clean now. They looked disappointed, even a little hurt. At Oral-B, there's more to brushing than just cleaning and deeply penetrating. "The other thing we want to do is to deliver a pleasurable brushing experience," said Dave.

Maisie said that Oral-B's focus-group brushers were in fact delighted. As support for this, she directed me to a press release that quoted people saying they felt "movement inside their mouths similar to the multiple cleaning actions of an automatic car wash." I wouldn't have guessed this to be the sort of brushing experience that provides delight. I would have guessed it to be the sort of brushing experience that provides abrasions and tire tracks along the gum line.

I have been using my complimentary CrossAction toothbrush, but I'm a few bristles short of delighted. It feels too big to me. But maybe I'm weird. Maybe I need to spend some time with an automatic carwash in my mouth.
salon.com | May 5, 2000

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