Boots Disclosing Tablets

Those of us of a certain age will remember visits to the school dentist, as well as coating our teeth in fissure sealing she used to give us little dental care packs containing bright pink disclosing tablets. The idea of these tablets is that they let you see how well you are brushing your teeth. You brush your teeth as normal and when you have finished you popped one of those tablets in your mouth and any areas where you had not brushed properly showed up bright pink.

I had looked for disclosing tablets a few times over the years and was unable to find them anywhere until one day in Boots I saw some on the shelves.These tablets cost around the £2 mark for a little packet of 12 and they are just like the ones I used to get at school except that they stain any areas of plaque bright blue instead of pink. The dye used is called Patent Blue and is E131, a food additive which is also used to give methadone its distinctive blue colour.

After brushing you chew one of these tiny tablets and swill the resulting goo that comes from the tablet mixing with your saliva around your mouth. The tablets taste foul, very bitter indeed which will certainly put anyone off swallowing the liquid which is just as well because after you have coated your mouth in the solution you spit any excess liquid out. The liquid sticks to any plaque deposits within your mouth giving you a visual guide to how well you are brushing your teeth. This is a great idea especially with children, it is very easy to miss trickier areas to brush such as along the gumline, between teeth or the backs of the molars and and by using these tablets you can improve your brushing technique to make sure you don't miss those areas in future.

I was pretty impressed at how little blue was left on my teeth after using these tablets, I will warn you though that the blue did stick to a couple of white fillings that I have but was easy enough to brush off again. The area that shocked me was my tongue which was covered in blue dye, I know you are meant to brush your tongue but using a toothbrush on that delicate area makes me want to gag! The blue brushed off my teeth easily enough but it took a lot of scrubbing to get the dye off my tongue, I never even attempted the area at the back of my mouth as I knew I would gag but managed to get it off the front of my tongue easily enough, the rest of the dye wore off over the course of a few hours.

I think these tablets are great, kids love the bright blue dye and it is a great way to encourage them to improve their dental hygiene as well as giving adults a quick check to see how good their brushing technique is.