Product Review and Giveaway: Colgate
Winner of Tropical Traditions Honey
And the winner of last week’s honey giveaway is… Jenny! E-mail me your mailing address and I will ensure that your honey arrives at your door.
Today happens to be Jenny’s birthday, so Happy Birthday 🙂 But I think Jenny would have won the giveaway regardless; her honey-mustard recipe and summer cocktail recipe sound so good. I am looking forward to giving those a try. Thanks to all who entered! I enjoyed everyone’s thoughtful, informative, and recipe-filled comments very much. Keep them coming!
Colgate Smile Campaign
Having a healthy mouth is imperative to a healthy body. Our teeth, jaw, gums, lips, and tongue all require continual maintenance to ensure that they stay in peak condition. The Colgate Smile Campaign is a fun way for everyone to learn more about oral care. It’s about taking everyday oral health issues and trying to understand them so that we can improve our health whilst increasing our knowledge.
I know that many people find it a chore to brush their teeth, but personally I love it. To me, having clean teeth is akin to sleeping in a bed with freshly-laundered sheets. It just feels great. I religiously brush two or three times daily and floss once or twice a day. I have to be a bit more careful these days, however, because my dentist informed me that in my enthusiasm I’ve been brushing too vigorously. Those gums are delicate!
There are some great articles on the Colgate website full of all kinds of information for oral care. It’s a very user-friendly system, with videos and interactive guides to accompany the articles. Before checking out the website, I had no idea that diabetes increases the risk of gum disease, for example. Fascinating.
Colgate sent me a whole box full of different products to try – toothbrushes, two kinds of toothpaste, and miniature “wisps” (travel brushes). I loved the regular toothbrushes. They come equipped with a gentle tongue scraper on the back, and the bristles themselves are very soft with a section of round bristles in the centre. Living Healthy in the Real World-approved, for sure.
I was a little disappointed with the Colgate Cavity Protection toothpaste. I find that it had very little flavour and I lost the wonderful minty taste mere seconds after brushing. The Colgate 2 in 1 Icy Blast Whitening Toothpaste & Mouthwash (how’s that for a “mouthful”? ;)) was much better. It takes a little bit extra toothpaste to work up a good lather, but the minty freshness has definite staying power.
The wisps are an especially interesting little brush. It’s for single-use, and it requires no water or rinsing. The bristles already have a “freshening bead” in them which acts as a toothpaste. The end of the toothbrush peaks into a soft pick in case you like to use toothpicks, too. A great innovation for the traveller, whether you’re on your way to New York City for a BlogHer conference (me!), backcountry camping (me!), or if you are kind of obsessive about brushing and like to have a toothbrush and paste in your purse for emergencies (umm… yeah, that’s also me).
I am not well-versed in ingredient lists of non-food products (yet, anyways), so I cannot comment much on them. However, I did notice that there’s “blue number 1” in some of the toothpastes, and I do not approve of artificial colours such as that. The wisps also contain sucralose. So that’s too bad – perhaps something that Colgate can consider doing in the future, though, is to make products which are made of more natural ingredients. All in all, I was pleased with the Colgate products.
Giveaway
Colgate sent me a huge pile of toothpaste in the care package which I am happy to send in all directions so that you can also have the opportunity to try out some of the company’s products! To enter to win, leave a comment below to describe your dental hygiene regime, your favourite brand of toothpaste, your secrets for a healthy smile, or anything related to teeth or gums! You all know the drill by now: winners will be picked via the random number generator unless someone leaves a particularly clever/insightful/witty comment, in which case I’ll play favourites 😉 Three different winners will be announced next week on Wednesday, August 18th.
Disclaimer: I received Colgate products for free but did not receive compensation for this review; the opinions expressed in this review are entirely my own.
i use a savoury toothpaste(parodontax), so minty-fresh seems alien to me!
it seems strange to me that you are so knowledgable about great alternatives to commercial cleaning products, that you try to eat naturally, but that you haven’t yet learned about the ingredients on cosmetics. don’t get me wrong, i haven’t a clue either… for instance, i’ve heard claims that the nanotechnology in more upscale cosmetics has unknown/potentially harmful impacts on the body but i don’t know why.
how about you do a 30 day challenge involving learning about cosmetics and the impact on the enviroment, or natural cosmetics? and then your readers can armchair learn from you. 🙂
I agree – it IS strange. I guess I’ve spent so much time learning about nutrition and that kind of thing, that I haven’t gotten around to investigating other issues. Which is completely hypocritical of me because I’m always talking about how important it is to take a holistic approach and try to look at things from all perspectives.
With regards to the 30 day challenge, that is a FANTASTIC idea. Can’t believe I didn’t think of that before! You rock. I’ll tweak it a bit to accommodate for our male readers, but yes, a challenge is in order. I’m already excited for it 😀
Every night, I brush, floss, and then use ACT mouthwash. My dentist strongly recommended I do this maybe 6 years ago because I was getting frequent cavities. Since then – No cavities! 🙂
Congrats! Cavities are the bane of my existance. For some reason, no matter how frequently and thoroughly I brush and floss, I seem to always wind up with a tiny cavity. Frustrating indeed!
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I don’t want to win the toothpaste because….tada! I’m allergic to it! I’m so allergic to mint that I can’t walk by a patch of it without feeling mildly nauseated. Toothpaste itself, the basic unflavored stuff, has some ingredient or other in it that I’m allergic to, and I’ve brushed my teeth for more than thirty years with baking soda and salt. I told my then-dentist what I was using the first time I saw him after I’d had the revelation the Normal People don’t feel slightly sick every time they brush their teeth, and he suggested I up the salt content to one part in three to increase the abrasion.
Rejoice with me, all you healthy people: it took me many decades, but in the last three years I finally succeeded in flossing my teeth every day instead of several times a week, and my mouth feels SO good.
I like the idea of using baking soda and salt to brush teeth. When you’re using that combination, you REALLY know that there’s no strange ingredients in your toothpaste. Is baking soda and salt equally as effective for maintaining clean teeth? I must admit that I haven’t looked into it (although I know how wonderful baking soda is for cleaning countertops and other surfaces around the house :D).
i brush twice a day and usually floss every day with a floss pick. i cant stand regular floss, it kills my fingers, hehe! my mom was a dental assistant, so we always practiced excellent oral care growing up. i dont have many cavities, and i did have braces for over a year.
my toothpastes of choice are…whatever i have a coupon for! usually colgate or crest. i dont like the peroxide in some of the pastes and the baking powder in others is yucky too. im a plain old mint toothpaste kinda gal.
Mint toothpaste is one of those small pleasures in life, I find. Strange the things that make us really happy – but for me, mint toothpaste is one of them! That would have been great to have a dental assistant as your parnet; you must have a wealth of knowledge for how to maintain clean teeth and gums.
I LOVE Wisps, you know, those small portable toothbrushes that have a “bead” of toothpaste on them and you don’t need water. Anyway, as far as dental hygiene goes, they are a toss up. The real reason I love them is that I chew on them until the bristles are as fringed as my split ends. Terrible habit, I know. But drives the family crazy, so win-win.