From The archive…..Musings on Time

Musings on time

I am writing this post as someone scheduled for an appointment has not turned up.

This is a source of frustration to me as

1) I am now at a loose end when I could be helping someone else

2) The business is not generating income which will have an impact on our figures at the end of the month

3) I would always phone and let the doctor, optician, hairdresser or other time-poor professional person know if I am running late or unfortunately could not make the appointment I had scheduled and would expect to be billed accordingly if I had done so at short notice.

But at least this means I have time to blog for you. So there’s that.

My musings about time are really of a professional nature.

I contend that pretty much EVERYONE knows to do a good job cleaning their teeth takes at least a universally recognised 2 minutes twice a day.

And that’s the TOOTHBRUSHING time, you must add on all those professionally recommended extras such as small brushes, floss or rinses that may have been suggested by your caring dental professionals to try.

This amounts to what might seem like A LOT of time spent performing oral hygiene routines every day.

So many people tell me that they know what they should do, sometimes they are actually quite good at it.

But usually they just can’t FIND THE TIME

So what else are these people doing with the most precious commodity we all possess?

Well, according to the Daily Telegraph the average Briton spends 1 hour 20 minutes on social media EVERY SINGLE DAY. 

And yes, I thought ‘that’s ridiculous’ too, no way is that me.

Until I remembered all those ‘missing half hours’ when I decided to settle down, have a quick scroll, and realise 30 minutes had passed and I still hadn’t taken the dog out. 

And as my dog will now doubt attest this was NOT the case 5 years ago.

So how is this relevant to tooth cleaning?

Well we only need to find 5 minutes a day.

5 tiny minutes. One less link clicked.

One fewer ‘celebrity’ weight loss selfie looked at and commented on.

One fewer online complaint about the state of the roads.

And surely by committing to spending 5 minutes a day LESS on social media it will help our mental health too.

Because we all know that stuff rots our brain cells.

And how our gums and teeth will thank us!

Our teeth will BASK in the glory of the fluoride in our toothpaste, sucking up those molecules to protect them against the onslaught of the sugar in the family bag of Maltesers we may happen to be sharing later.

Our gums will be grateful that we have scrubbed away the damaging bacteria that so love to get up close and personal, making toxins that will cause tiny ulcerations, bleeding and, if we are not one of the lucky ones, lead to tooth loosening!

And how wonderful it feels to have ‘gaps’ between our teeth instead of the crevices being full of food or that frousty smelling white stuff that gets lodged when we neglect out tiny brushes.

Yes, our fresh breath will also make our significant other thank us for the 5 minutes less we spent on Facebook.

And that, indeed, is a VERY good use of 5 minutes.

#happydentist