Monday, August 12, 2013

Don't Toss Toothbrush after Strep Throat

It is commonly recommended that you toss out your toothbrush if you have strep throat and are being treated with antibiotics. The idea was that you don't want to re-infect yourself with the strep after your antibiotics are finished. It turns out the strep is pretty fragile outside the body and dies quickly as the toothbrush dries.
This brings me to what I routinely recommend.  Have as many, or more, toothbrushes as the number of times you brush your teeth daily. Shake out the water after rinsing them and give them a full 24 hours to dry. Rotate through a sequence of your brushes. There are lots of bacteria in your mouth and they thrive in moisture. Allowing your toothbrush to dry will kill most of them.  Though there are not a lot of studies on this subject, it was nice to see this study presented at the Pediatric Academic Society's annual meeting regarding a very important pathological bacteria that dies quickly on a dry toothbrush.

Photo Credit: wikipedia commons
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1 comment:

  1. UnknownJune 14, 2014 at 5:55 AM

    Great post. This article is really very effective and informative. I think its must be helpful for our health. Thanks for sharing your nice post about Don't Toss Toothbrush after Strep Throat .
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