Content

• Ingredients
• Steps
• Tips
• Warnings
• What do you need

Maybe you don't like the taste of regular store-bought toothpaste, or you are looking for ways to save a little, in any case, it will be interesting to make your own toothpaste if you like to do something yourself. Plus, you'll eliminate many of the artificial ingredients in standard pastes: sweeteners (usually saccharin), emulsifiers, artificial flavors, and so on.

Ingredients

• 1/2 cup baking soda
• 1/4 cup hydrogen peroxide
• 1/4 cup warm water

Optional:

• 3 teaspoons of glycerin
• 3 teaspoons xylitol
• 1/4 cup water

Steps

1. 1 Pour half a cup (110 g) of baking soda into a mixing bowl. Soda has natural cleansing properties and can even be found in some mass-produced pastes. It is non-toxic and helps to polish the teeth. Some recipes require table salt, in which case three parts of baking soda and one part of salt should be mixed.
2. 2 Add three teaspoons (15 g) glycerin to every quarter (55 g) dry mixture. This is optional: glycerin acts as a sweetener. An alternative option is xylitol. It is a natural, sugar-free sweetener that truly maintains healthy teeth and gums. (Note: Glycerin leaves a coating on teeth that is not easy to remove. This layer inhibits enamel growth, re-mineralization, and dental health.)
3. 3 Add 1/4 cup (60 g) household hydrogen peroxide and a drop of peppermint or any other essential oil. Peroxide will naturally disinfect your mouth and help whiten your teeth. If it is not at hand, replace it with water. A drop of peppermint oil will freshen your breath. Hydrogen peroxide breaks down very quickly under the influence of ultraviolet rays, so this paste should be kept away from sunlight. If you don't like the minty smell, try cinnamon, fennel, ginger, vanilla, or sweet almond extract. Whatever it is, make sure there is no sugar or strong acidity in there, as this will quench the baking soda.
4. 4 Mix hydrogen peroxide and baking soda until pasty. Add a little more peroxide if necessary for the desired consistency. See warnings below.
5. 5 Store your toothpaste in a small plastic container to keep it from drying out. You can buy a small empty lotion bottle so the paste will squeeze out easily and you won't need to dip your toothbrush into it every time.

Tips

• Use a dark container for storage. Hydrogen peroxide is light sensitive.
• Kids may like adding food coloring to the pasta for a change. A great excuse to teach them how to mix colors to get new ones. Try to avoid artificial colors like Red 40, as they lead to attention deficit hyperactivity disorder if swallowed, according to some studies.
• If the baking soda is too harsh for your teeth or gums, you can achieve a similar result by rinsing your mouth with a very weak baking soda solution after brushing your teeth with a bare brush. Salt is a softer abrasive.

Warnings

• Never eat toothpaste. Also avoid swallowing. The small amount of paste that you can accidentally swallow is usually not harmful, unless you are hypersensitive to baking soda.
• The addition of any acid (such as lemon or lime juice) will cause a violent chemical reaction with the baking soda, and it will lose its properties.
• A toothpaste without fluoride is not able to protect enamel in the same way as a paste with this substance, in addition, do not expect from it to re-mineralize carious teeth. Check with your dentist before switching to such a paste yourself or offering it to your children.
• While children who regularly swallow regular toothpaste are at risk of developing fluorosis, the only cause for concern when swallowing homemade toothpaste is its soda component. It can be too abrasive for your teeth if you do not wait for it to dissolve completely. Hydrogen peroxide can be irritating if swallowed, so in the children's version of the paste, it should be completely replaced with water.
• Use only household hydrogen peroxide, which is a standard substitute for alcohol as a disinfectant. It is easy to find it in the pharmacy next to denatured alcohol. The usual concentration is 3%, which is significantly less than required for hair bleaching and strong industrial solutions.Large amounts of hydrogen peroxide can be poisoned, but according to the National Institutes of Health, "most contact with household hydrogen peroxide is relatively harmless." If you are careful to ensure that equal volumes of peroxide and water are mixed in the paste, it will be much safer than using a 3% solution directly. Hydrogen peroxide always breaks down into water and oxygen, and the process is faster in an alkaline solution such as this paste. Unless you made the toothpaste just before use, the peroxide is almost certainly decomposed by now. If you want it to whiten your teeth, brush your teeth with this paste immediately after making it.
• While some people think baking soda is too abrasive for daily use, it is found in some American Dental Association-approved toothpastes. In addition, baking soda dissolves almost instantly upon contact with water and saliva, making it no more abrasive than salt water. Your toothpaste is much rougher in this sense than dissolved soda mixture. Soda is much less abrasive than another common ingredient in pastes made, silicic acid (known as sterilized wet sand), which is added for the same purpose.

What do you need

• Stirring container
• Measuring spoon