What If You Stop Brushing Your Teeth for a Year

In an odontic TED-Ed lesson written by dental biologist Justin Merritt and directed by Oz Animation, narrator Addison Anderson examines what happens when you skip brushing and flossing. Bad breath comes first, and plaque coats most of your teeth by day four, but after about a year, long-term gum inflammation triggers an immune response that starts breaking down the jawbone holding your teeth in place. Thankfully, brushing again within two or three weeks fully reverses the early stages of gingivitis and tooth decay.

At any given time, your mouth is maintaining a delicate balance between hundreds of microbial species, which is why dentists agree that you should brush twice and floss once every day. But what if you just… didn’t?

The lesson’s clay characters come from Lee and Eliška Oz, the Czechia-based duo behind Oz Animation, who also animated TED-Ed’s lesson on how broken bones heal.