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A Gender Gap in Dental HygieneA growing number of Americans say they brush their teeth after every meal, but when it comes to overall dental...

A Gender Gap in Dental Hygiene
A growing number of Americans say they brush their teeth after every meal, but when it comes to overall dental hygiene, women clearly outpace men, a new survey has found.

The survey, conducted for the American Dental Association, found that almost one-fourth of the people questioned said they brushed after every meal—more than twice the number reported in a survey six years earlier.

Broken down by sex, though, the results tell a different story.

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About 28 per cent of the women said they brushed after every meal, for example, compared with about 20 per cent of the men. Almost 57 per cent of the women said they brushed twice a day, compared with 49 per cent of the men.

The women in the survey were also more likely to say they had a regular dentist, a finding that confirms what one dentist, Dr Kimberly Harms, said she has seen in her own practice in Farmington, Minn.

In her experience, said Harms, an adviser to the dental association, women are less likely to delay coming in for check-ups. “We tend to see more men coming in after five or six or seven years,” she said.

For the survey, done in December, more than a thousand people across the country were asked about their dental habits.

New York Times News Service