Welcome to Week 3, where you develop better hygiene habits. If this is your first 60 DoD then read the original post first.

For a focus this year, I want to talk about dental hygiene. This is something that we often overlook, I think (I'm looking at you UK/AUS). Having good teeth can be defined as having teeth that are aligned, have all necessary dental work in place, and are white. If you're lacking in any of these areas it can really turn people off, particularly women. Nothing worse than to be swole and well-dressed and then smile at a woman and she thinks you've been feeding on the brains of corpses all day.

Having "good teeth" has been seen as a marker for health and vitality for centuries (if not millennia). Think back to horse trading, where examining teeth was considered an essential part of assessing the health of the animal. Similar practices are legendary in the slave trades probably going back to the Roman Empire.

Having bad teeth can be the result of many things, including malnutrition, disease, bad genes, smoking, or simple neglect. No matter what your problem (or its cause), the good news is there are things you can do to help, but they need to be habitual. That means you need to do them all the fucking time, in case you don't get what I mean.

Here are some small things that you need to be doing right now, no matter what your mouth looks like:

  1. Brush at least twice a day. At the minimum you should hit this when you wake up and before you go to sleep. If you can have a little kit at work for after lunch, all the better.

  2. Floss at least once a day. Gum health is becoming a major issue (in the First World at least) with many people who end up needing dentures when they're old needing them because their gums shriveled up and recoiled in horror, leaving their teeth roots exposed. Fucking horror-show. Don't be that guy; floss now, keep your teeth later.

  3. Have a toothpaste you use for whitening, and one you use for building enamel back up. There are many toothpastes out there that help remove stains from your teeth. There are also special ones that are high fluoride and help build your enamel back up if it is wearing thin. You should have both, and you should rotate using them. You're brushing twice a day, right? Use the stain remover in the AM so your teeth look nice heading out the door, and use the enamel builder at night.

  4. Use a non-alcohol mouthwash, occasionally. I say non-alcohol because the traditional mouthwashes will burn your gums and make them recede even more. Not cool, right? I say occasionally because mouthwash is like Imodium for your mouth: you're just nuking the whole goddamn biosphere in there, and that's probably not something that's good to do constantly. But if you have bad breath on the reg, then you need to do this (and gargle it to the back of your throat too, as that's where the bacteria tend to congregate for halitosis).

  5. Use at-home whitening products. There are easy to apply home whitening strips and trays and such that will help keep stains and discoloration at bay. They don't cost much and they are effective. Most want you to keep them in for half an hour. Pro tip: put them in when you get back from the gym, and wear them while you're in the shower and getting dressed.

Now, what if you have bigger issues. Crooked teeth. Cavities. Broken teeth. Well, there's no way to say this other than quit being a bitch and get that shit fixed. There are new technologies out there that can keep you from needing braces to correct misaligned teeth (clear aligners are one such miracle). I shouldn't have to tell you that if your shit is broken or has cavities that you need to deal with that ASAP. You leave that shit untended and you will know pain. And despair. And then more pain. And then Big Expense.

So fix your shit, and develop new habits that take better care of your teeth and mouth. Be attractive, not unattractive.

(I'm looking forward to the reactions to this post. We'll see who wants to make excuses to protect their self-image, and who is ready to claim a great set of teeth.)