Some healthy-eating mailing list I'm on mentioned tooth soap and since I'd always wondered about some of the ingredients (e.g., fluoride, hydrated silica) found in regular toothpaste, I hunted around for tooth soap and kept being led to these folks. I read some of the reviews on their products, looked at their website, and decided on the Spearmint Liqui-Gel version.
I think another reviewer of the whip version mentioned that while there's almost no flavor in that one, since that container is sealed, there's no chance of adding your own. Fortunately, this "liqui-gel" bottle has a bulb-style dropper, so it'll be easy enough to add a drop or three of my own (organic?) essential oil to boost the flavor. (I haven't done so, but plan to.)
Speaking of flavor, as-is, there's almost zero spearmint flavor. The flavor is like very, very, very light soap. It was a little tough to be tasting that soap flavor first thing in the morning, but things are better now and here's why I think that's the case:
- I don't swallow any of it. With regular toothpaste, if some slips past the back of your mouth, into your throat, no biggie. With this, if some slips into your throat, you'll be enjoying the faint taste of soap for a while, so while I'm brushing, I tilt my head forward and if there's too much to keep in my mouth, I spit some of it out into the sink and keep brushing.
- I vigorously rinse with water three times after brushing.
- I only use a pea-sized amount on my brush. (Too much and I'll be tasting soap afterwards.)
Know that you're not going to end up with a mouthful of soap suds. I guess you could use a bunch and get suds, but if you use a small amount, you won't look rabid or anything. :)
Downsides:
- As mentioned above, very little spearmint flavor. Hopefully, I can add more essential oil so that I have something approaching "minty" breath, as opposed to neutral breath. But maybe that's not necessary. I'll ask my wife if she wants me to ratchet up the minty. :)
- Takes a little getting used to.
- The "squeaky-clean" feeling that people mention might be from the oil that's part of the soap. The true test will be my next few dentist visits.
- The "liqui-gel" is more "liqui" than "gel". I end up unscrewing the dropper, letting most of the "liqui-gel" run back into the bottle until just a little bit remains inside the dropper. I then carefully hover it over the wet toothbrush and lightly squeeze the bulb (to avoid bubbles) to dispense the pea-sized portion. I then carefully return the dropper to the bottle (so I don't have to clean up dripped soap). The problem with this arrangement is doing it when I've just woken up -- it requires a lot of attention and focus that I'm slightly lacking first thing in the morning!
- I thought about buying the whip version (so I didn't have to deal with the drippy "liqui-gel"), but it seems like it's less product for the same price. Maybe I'm incorrectly predicting how little product is in the whip version.
Again, future dentist visits will tell the whole story, but -- product/dispenser quirks aside -- I do like using a product without all the junk that's normally found in toothpaste.
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