An implantologist's own routine: eighteen seconds a day
Implantologist: “This is the exact routine I use on my own teeth, and it takes eighteen seconds a day”
Last updated 7 September 2026 · 8 min read
People ask me what I do myself, and they are usually disappointed by the answer, because it is not a regime. It is a schedule.
I want to give you the actual thing — the times, the order, and the reasoning — rather than a list of principles. But the reasoning has to come first or the schedule looks arbitrary.
The patient who changed how I think about this
A woman in her early fifties, referred for two implants. Her oral hygiene was better than mine. She had brushed twice a day for thirty-five years, flossed nightly, never missed a cleaning. She apologised to me when she sat down, which is the part I still think about.
I asked her the question I now ask everybody, and it is not about brushing. I asked her to walk me through what she ate and drank on an ordinary Tuesday.
Coffee at seven. Breakfast. Coffee at ten. A herbal tea with lemon mid-morning, because she had given up the second coffee. Lunch. An apple at four. Dinner. A sparkling water in the evening, sipped over an hour in front of the television.
Eight occasions. She had done everything the profession told her, and nobody had ever mentioned the one variable that was actually driving her outcome.
The root cause nobody names
Brushing is mechanical. Bristles scrape plaque off a surface. That works and I am not telling anyone to stop.
But the process that ends in an extraction is chemical. Enamel is a mineral, and minerals dissolve in acid.
There is a measured line. Below a pH of about 5.5, enamel begins giving up mineral. Above it, mineral moves back in. That exchange runs both ways, all day, every day of your life — and the only thing that has ever determined the outcome is which direction runs more often.
Each occasion opens roughly a forty-minute cycle: five minutes for the pH to fall, fifteen or so underneath the line, twenty for saliva to climb back. Six occasions is six of those. And both brushings sit at the two moments of the day furthest from every single one.
SEE WHAT THE PROTOCOL USESRegular price €39.99 a bottle · today from €18.13The protocol, exactly as I run it
Eighteen seconds spread across the day, plus the brushing you already do. Nothing here is optional-but-nice; each step is placed where it is for a reason and the reason is underneath it.
Brush. Do not rinse with water afterwards.
Two minutes, as normal. Rinsing straight after washes away most of what you just applied; spit, and leave it.
Three seconds, and this is the one people skip.
Two or three sprays, at teeth and tongue, held for five seconds. No water, no sink, no spitting. The first coffee opens the first window of the day and it is almost always taken standing in a kitchen with a bathroom eight steps away that nobody uses.
Do not brush here. Enamel that has just been in acid is temporarily softened, and abrasion at that moment removes more than it cleans. This is the single most common mistake I see in careful people.
Same three seconds. Desk, car, canteen, anywhere.
Lunch, the afternoon coffee, the biscuit, the sparkling water. Each one is a window and the format has to survive being somewhere with no sink, which is why it has to be safe to swallow.
Stop sipping. Finish drinks.
A coffee taken in ten minutes is one window. The same coffee nursed for an hour is a window that never closes. This one change is free and it is worth more than most products.
And chew something sugar-free after eating if you have nothing else — it raises salivary flow, and saliva is the buffer.
Brush, then spray last. Nothing after it.
Salivary flow falls at night, which means the mouth loses most of its defence for seven or eight hours. Whatever is on the surface when you fall asleep has the longest uninterrupted contact time of the entire day. This is the most valuable three seconds in the protocol.
The alcohol rinse. Permanently.
Alcohol dries the mouth. Saliva is both the buffer against acid and the delivery system for mineral. A product bought to make a mouth healthier that reduces the fluid defending it is working against you, and the fresh-breath effect it sells is gone in two hours anyway because nothing that caused the smell was addressed.
What the three seconds actually deliver
Hydroxyapatite is the mineral enamel is made of. When acid takes mineral out of the surface, that is the mineral it takes — so this is the same material offered back, in a particle small enough to settle into the surface, rather than a substitute or a coating.
Xylitol works on the organisms producing the acid. It resembles sugar closely enough that they take it up and then cannot metabolise it. They fill up on something that returns them nothing.
What is actually measured
Four numbers, and it is worth being precise about where each one comes from. The first was measured in a laboratory. The other three come from users over four weeks of ordinary use.
It has also been dermatologically tested — a patch test on twenty adults with sensitive skin, recorded as non-irritant and non-sensitising.
What that adds up to
- Mineral, not just cleaning. Hydroxyapatite is what enamel is made of. It is the one thing a rinse that only removes can never give back.
- Whiter without bleaching. The whitening is a smoother surface holding less stain, not peroxide stripping the outer layer.
- Breath that comes from the tongue, not from mint. Fewer of the bacteria producing sulphur compounds, and no alcohol drying the mouth out two hours later.
- Less tartar. Reported by nearly three in four over four weeks.
- Three seconds, anywhere. No water, no sink, no spitting, no rinsing — which is the only way anything can be used at the moment the acid window is actually open.
- Safe to swallow. Which is what makes the point above possible at all.
I built the format before I built the formula, because the format was the harder problem. A toothbrush cannot go to lunch with you, and a 500 ml rinse that has to be spat into a sink cannot either. It had to work with no water and no rinsing, which meant it had to be safe to swallow, and it had to take three seconds, because nothing slower gets done six times a day by anybody — including me. It is patent pending.
Why it is not in shops
It is sold on the official site only. That is not a marketing device — a spray priced to be used six times a day does not survive a retail margin on top of it, and this is how the price below is possible at all.
Skip, pause or cancel the delivery option at any time. No minimum, no fee. The protocol depends on the bottle being present, which is the entire argument for not running out.
If you are still not sure
Every order carries a 60-day money-back guarantee, counted from the day the order arrives. Keep the bottle — sealed, opened or empty, there is nothing to send back. Email with the order number and the purchase price and original shipping are refunded.
Sixty days is roughly three hundred and sixty acid windows. That is long enough to know.
What to do next
- Count your occasions tomorrow. Everything except plain water. Most people are surprised.
- Stop sipping. Free, immediate, and worth more than most purchases.
- Cover the windows you cannot avoid — three seconds each, wherever you are.
- Give it sixty days before you judge it. Enamel exchange is slow and week one is not the test.
Sources
- Dawes C. What is the critical pH and why does a tooth dissolve in acid? J Can Dent Assoc 2003;69(11):722–4
- Published literature on post-acid brushing and enamel abrasion
- Published literature on nocturnal salivary flow
- Gustafsson B.E. et al. — the Vipeholm dental caries study, on frequency of intake versus quantity
- Milgrom P. et al. — xylitol and Streptococcus mutans, PubMed
- CariSpray Clinical Prescribing Guide (EU), OralAdvance Labs — the four measured figures and the dermatological patch test