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Our teeth are not merely a matter of comfort: their condition directly affects our overall health. Yet the habit that protects them—brushing—remains widely neglected. Not because of a lack of information, but because of poor adherence: the ability to actually put into practice, over time, what we already know. The solution is not to make people feel even more guilty, but to reinvent the ritual itself.
For a long time, the mouth was treated as a separate territory, disconnected from the rest of the body. That is false. Oral health is a gateway to overall health: periodontal diseases are associated with an increased risk of cardiovascular disease, have a two-way relationship with diabetes—each worsening the other—and are linked to pregnancy complications, such as premature birth. Poorly maintained oral health is not just one more cavity: it is a risk factor for the entire body.
And there is a price to pay—one we all bear. Periodontal diseases already affect 19.4 million people in France, or more than one adult in three. Their main trigger is dental plaque—which only regular and effective brushing can remove. They alone cost nearly €807 million a year to France’s national health insurance system, through the conditions they worsen: diabetes, cardiovascular disease, and kidney disease (Asterès study for the French Dental Association, 2023). Much of this cost could be avoided. Yet our system does the opposite of what common sense would dictate: it spends vast sums on repairs—crowns, implants, dentures—but almost never on the daily habit that would have made them unnecessary. When it comes to our teeth, we pay for repairs, never for maintenance. The ultimate paradox: under current regulations, the toothbrush itself has no health-related status. It is neither a medicine nor a medical device—merely a consumer product, no more considered a healthcare item than a roll of toilet paper.
And yet, the remedy is almost disarmingly simple. The first line of defense is remarkably straightforward—brush your teeth for two minutes, twice a day—and we all know it by heart. But nearly one French person in two aged 18 to 34 has already gone more than 48 hours without brushing their teeth (OpinionWay survey, 2023), and when we do brush our teeth, we spend an average of about fifty seconds: less than half the recommended time. We do not have an information problem, but an adherence problem: we know, but we do not do it.
Why such a gap? Because repeating an instruction does not change behavior. Behavioral science has demonstrated this across every area of health, from smoking to physical activity: habits are not changed through commands or guilt, but by reducing friction—making the right action easier than the wrong one. The standard itself has already bent to reality: for a long time, people were advised to brush for three minutes, three times a day, before the recommendation was reduced in France to two minutes morning and evening in 2013—largely because the longer version was almost never followed. And yet even reduced to two minutes, the effort remains tedious and is widely done poorly.
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That leaves us with an uncomfortable question. In a single generation, almost everything we use every day has been transformed: the phone, the car, even artificial intelligence. One object, or almost one, has escaped this revolution—the one we nevertheless put in our mouths morning and evening. The electric toothbrush was invented in 1954; seventy years later, the device has become more powerful, but the ritual itself has not changed: still two minutes, zone by zone, with the same constraint. As if brushing were too mundane a task to deserve rethinking. This conservatism has a cost: it has left millions of people alone with an unpleasant chore.
The good news is that we can reduce this friction—not by demanding more, but by rethinking the use itself. What if the ritual that takes us two minutes, zone by zone, could be completed in just a few seconds tomorrow, with all our teeth at once? What if the chore became so simple, so quick, that there would be no reason to skip it? This is the conviction that brings us together at Y-Brush (a Biotech Dental group brand): not to add yet another product, but to create a new health ritual, so that “brushing your teeth properly” stops being a discipline reserved for the most diligent. A patented innovation, designed and manufactured in France—from a laboratory that already equips dentists around the world.
But innovation alone will not be enough. This ritual is not built in the dental office; it takes place every day at home. The dentist sees their patient once or twice a year; the other 363 days are beyond their reach. The challenge is to reconnect the two—to make the dental office the starting point for this new daily ritual: taking thirty seconds to demonstrate the right technique, recommending the appropriate tool, and turning a check-up into a genuine health education appointment.
That is the purpose of our work alongside dental professionals: to give them the educational, scientific, and practical tools to make oral prevention a shared reflex, from the dental chair to the bathroom. It is time to change our approach. Let us stop repeating to our fellow citizens that they brush their teeth poorly; let us simply help them brush their teeth properly. The health of millions of smiles—and, more broadly, our health as a whole—starts there.
Philippe Veran, Founder and CEO of the Biotech Dental group
Benjamin Cohen, VP Consumers & Patients, Biotech Dental
