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Since the fourth millennium BCE, when urban civilizations first appeared in ancient Mesopotamia, humans have strived to achieve proper dental hygiene. Yet the nylon-bristled toothbrush we use today didn’t come along until the 1930s. For the thousands of years in between, people relied on rudimentary tools that evolved with scientific knowledge and technological advancements over time. Some of the earliest toothbrush predecessors date as far back as 3500 BCE. Here’s a look at how people kept their teeth clean before the modern toothbrush.AdvertisementChew Sticks and ToothpicksSometime around the year 3500 BCE, the ancient Babylonians (located near modern-day Iraq) created a...

<p>Security researchers have warned that millions of hacked toothbrushes could be used in a massive cyber attack.</p><p>Internet-connected toothbrushes could be linked together in something known as a botnet, which would allow them to perform a distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack that overloads websites and servers with huge amounts of web traffic.</p>

SANTA MONICA, CA — A local man was tragically rendered unable to brush his teeth after he mistakenly neglected to pay the monthly subscription fee on his smart electric toothbrush. "Toothbrush functionality disabled," the toothbrush had chirped loudly after a payment was declined. "Please update your method of payment to continue brushing your teeth." "This is awful," said Jake Brown, owner of the toothbrush. "Things have just been so busy with the holidays and everything going on, I forgot to make this month's payment on my subscription for my OraDent Max, and now I haven't been able to brush my...

Wow, sonic technology to clean our teeth! That's what we have now, and it makes it easy to have cleaner, whiter teeth and healthier gums. The sonic technology drives the bristle tip velocity so that fluids can clean into tight spaces and the gum line. Healthy gums translate to a healthier heart. The toothbrush has come a long way. But what did people use thousands of years ago before electricity or nylon was invented? Well the first toothbrush was no doubt the human finger. It is recorded that people used salt, chalk or soot and rubbed it on their teeth...

FULL TITLE: One THIRD of millennials only brush their teeth once a day - and most Americans would rather go without sex for a month than see a dentist, study reveals One third of millennials only brush their teeth once a day, according to a new study. Even in adulthood, the research revealed that Americans can be neglectful of their oral hygiene, with 62 percent reporting that they were too scared to go to the dentist. Skipping the ritual sounds harmless enough, but going without brushing and flossing has been linked to health risks ranging from gum disease to dementia...

We all know about electric toothbrushes. There are electric toothbrushes with rechargeable batteries and ones that you plug in to the wall for use. While these are helpful in providing thousands of rotating motions per minute, engineers at an innovative company have come up with an even better idea — a 3D-printed toothbrush that reduces your brushing time to 6 seconds.  What the Blizzident toothbrush looks like. (Image via Blizzident) The company, Blizzident, comprised of dentists, engineers, and computer scientists is using technology to change the way we brush our teeth. In order to create this perfectly tailored toothbrush, Blizzident creates...

Though it looks like a tiny purple blowtorch, a pencil-sized plume of plasma on the tip of a small probe remains at room temperature as it swiftly dismantles tough bacterial colonies deep inside a human tooth. It’s not another futuristic product of George Lucas’ imagination—it’s the exciting work of USC School of Dentistry and USC Viterbi School of Engineering researchers looking for new ways to safely fight tenacious biofilm infections in patients. Two of the study’s authors are Chunqi Jiang, a research assistant professor in the Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical Engineering-Electrophysics, and Parish Sedghizadeh, assistant professor of clinical dentistry...

OTTAWA -- Consumers and retailers should be cautious when buying toothbrushes after counterfeit products bearing brand names were found on the Canadian market, Health Canada warned Monday. The toothbrushes are falsely labelled as Colgate Massager, Colgate Navigator, Oral B Classic 40, Oral B Contura and Colgate 360. "If an imitation is suspected, consumers should stop using them immediately, as the quality, safety and effectiveness of counterfeit products cannot be assured," Health Canada said in an advisory. Retailers with stock from Canadian importer AG Liquidation should check their products for authenticity and remove any they suspect to be bogus, the agency...

So earlier today we had a most illuminating thread on the travails of bathing one's cat. Now I'd like to hear from cat owners' experiences with brushing their cats' teeth: How often? How easy is it? How best to do it? We have a cute little kitteh or two here whose breath is beginning to represent The Crypt. And I've heard that remedial dental work on cats can be $pendy as all get-out.

Doctors remove 3-inch toothbrush from 31-year-old woman’s nose; woman claims she does not know how the brush got there; doctors shocked that she lived with it for two months. Doctors at Sapna Health Care Hospital in Ghatkopar, who operated on a 31-year-old woman on Saturday, were shocked at what they saw lodged in her nose — a three-inch piece of a broken toothbrush! The offending object had been lodged in the woman’s nasal cavity for two long months and had been causing her terrible pain. So how did it get there? The woman claims she is not sure. She says,...

(BERKELEY, CALIFORNIA) Perhaps French people don’t bathe or brush their teeth regularly, according to a provocative study recently published by La Point magazine, but neither do American liberals, according to a similar study that finds striking parallels between both populations. While the French study, “24 Hours in France – An Unusual Portrait of France and the French,” shows a rather unflattering picture of the French, the American study, conducted by the University of California at Berkekey, could have been Xerox copied because the results are so eye-poppingly similar. For example, only one in 10 of both populations regularly uses soap....

WASHINGTON - Twelve-year-old Deamonte Driver died of a toothache Sunday. A routine, $80 tooth extraction might have saved him. If his mother had been insured. If his family had not lost its Medicaid. If Medicaid dentists weren't so hard to find. If his mother hadn't been focused on getting a dentist for his brother, who had six rotted teeth. By the time Deamonte's own aching tooth got any attention, the bacteria from the abscess had spread to his brain, doctors said. After two operations and more than six weeks of hospital care, the Prince George's County boy died. Deamonte's death...

IYADH (AFP) - A Saudi medical team reportedly removed a toothbrush from the stomach of a man who had swallowed it 22 years ago. According to the official SPA news agency, the toothbrush caused the 70-year-old patient no ill effects until a few days before he was operated on, said Dr Abdulrahman al-Zahrani, the head of the team at King Abdul Aziz Specialist Hospital in the western town of Taif. The operation was successful, Zahrani added.

0800: Wake up and tiptoe around the house so as not to violate “noise laws” and get a visit from the police. 0805: Don’t take a bath. 0810: Don’t comb hair; leave in hip “mussed” look made popular by Germans (slept in one position for 6 hours) and Brits (oily mussed look because bathroom plumbing is crap). 0830: Leave home and leave door unlocked for burglar to have easier entry so he won't smash expensive union-made door. 0900: Go to nearest bar for coffee picked by slave-labor in Africa. 0910: Score some pot from a friend met on the street....

Toothbrush tops invention survey Students, adults asked which tool they couldn’t live without MSNBC Jan. 21 — What’s more important, your toothbrush or your computer? The answer seems obvious, but what if the question becomes: “Which could you not live without?” A survey released Tuesday found that the lowly toothbrush beat out computers, cars, cell phones and microwaves as the “must-have” tool.