OraWellness Smile Toothpaste - Vegan Cinnamony Mint

Great question! The short answer is, it's really up to you.

To give you some backstory, we created the line of OraWellness Smile toothpastes for a handful of reasons. 

First, to accommodate the requests of many of our community members who have asked us to make a paste product that’s easier to use than our HealThy Mouth Blend and Shine. 

Second, while ‘crunchy’ folks like us are willing to use tooth oil and/or tooth powder, there are lots of people out there who have never had any experience using oils or powder for brushing their teeth. By providing a paste option, we have a product line that’s more familiar and therefore more accessible for the broader community, which helps us spread more healthy smiles out into the world. :) 

Third, we’ve been working on this project for a full decade, and in the past few years, we’ve felt extra motivated to provide an exceptional hydroxyapatite toothpaste for our community. Why? We’ve seen many remineralizing products hit the market with formulations that only contain a sprinkling of functional ingredients. We spotted a big opportunity for improvement in the market, because so many hydroxyapatite toothpaste options don't contain enough remineralizing ingredients—like hydroxyapatite—to effectively support a healthier smile.

Back to the question at hand: thanks to the convenience of OraWellness Smile's paste format, some people may choose to use it as a replacement for Shine and/or the HealThy Mouth Blend. For general oral health and tooth remineralization support, OraWellness Smile may very well be sufficient.

(It's good to note that the Paleo versions of OraWellness Smile contain the same microcrystalline hydroxyapatite protein/mineral complex that's in our Shine Remineralizing Tooth Whitening powder, and we do believe that OraWellness Smile will provide similar supportive benefits as Shine. But, we don’t have a decade of customer feedback (yet) proving that Smile helps to remineralize decay, like we do with Shine.)

However, other folks might choose to use varying combinations of our products based on what’s going on in their mouth.

If you're experiencing issues that suggest gum disease might be present, like bleeding gums or persistent bad breath, then it may be wise for you to continue using the HealThy Mouth Blend either separately or in combination with Smile for two main reasons:

1. Since the Blend is an oil, it works its way into gum pockets more easily than a paste.
2. The Orange Vanilla flavors of Smile don't contain any of the HealThy Mouth Blend's essential oils, so it doesn't provide those benefits. And, while the Cinnamony Mint flavors of OraWellness Smile do contain the Blend's warming and cooling oils (cinnamon, clove, peppermint, spearmint), Smile does not contain the Blend's essential oils of myrrh and manuka. These components of the HealThy Mouth Blend's formula serve important functions. Myrrh has been used since before Biblical times to help with a wide array of health issues because it speeds the healing process by increasing blood flow to compromised tissue. Manuka makes it more difficult for oral ‘thug bugs’, and the plaque that they create, to cling to teeth and gum tissue. It also happens to be the most effective plant essence for managing the toughest of the ‘thug bugs’ that are associated with gum disease.

If you're looking to get the best tooth whitening benefits, we believe that using dry Shine either by itself or in combination with OraWellness Smile will most likely provide even more support to your gentle whitening efforts.

So to sum it up, feel free to do whatever works for you. You can use any of our products alone, or choose to use a combination of them. If you choose to use a combination of them, you can do that however you'd like—by using one after another, by using one in the morning and the other at night, or by using any or all of them together at the same time.

Yes!

While OraWellness Smile is intended to be a wonderful base oral hygiene product, you can certainly use some ‘supercharged’ strategies to achieve greater results.

For example, to get that ‘whoosh’ of fresh breath from the HealThy Mouth Blend, you can add 1-2 drops of Blend to your brush with some OraWellness Smile.

To provide more gentle whitening support to your teeth, feel free to brush with OraWellness Smile and occasionally dip your brush into dry Shine. Use that dry Shine to brush specific areas where you want the extra whitening support.

We currently offer 4 options for our OraWellness Smile Hydroxyapatite toothpaste:

• PALEO formula in CINNAMONY MINT flavor
• PALEO formula in ORANGE VANILLA flavor
• VEGAN formula in CINNAMONY MINT flavor
• VEGAN formula in ORANGE VANILLA flavor

FORMULAS:

The Paleo formula's main remineralizing ingredient is the same microcrystalline hydroxyapatite mineral/protein complex that's in our Shine Remineralizing Tooth Whitening powder. It's derived from pasture raised, grass-fed New Zealand cattle bone.

The Vegan formula's main remineralizing ingredient is a vegan-friendly, lab synthesized microparticle size hydroxyapatite.

Both formulas support tooth remineralization by providing the exact same minerals our teeth are made of, in the right ratio, and in the right (micro) particle size for optimal support (without the potential risks of nanoparticles). 

They also both include xylitol and proteins to boost hydroxyapatite's remineralization potential. The proteins in the Paleo formula are naturally found in the cattle bone MCHA, which is non-ashed to preserve its naturally occurring critical peptides (aka proteins). In the Vegan formula, the hydroxyapatite does not inherently contain proteins, so we added pea protein to the formula to mimic the clinical benefits that protein plays in our Paleo formulas.

FLAVORS:

The Cinnamony Mint flavor contains many of the same certified organic essential oils as our HealThy Mouth Blend (the warming and cooling oils–cinnamon, clove, peppermint, spearmint). So it will offer the same soothing and oral-microbiome-balancing benefits as we describe for those oils in our article, What’s in the HealThy Mouth Blend? (And why is it so effective?). It's also ideal for folks who like a minty fresh flavor from their toothpaste.

The Orange Vanilla flavor was originally formulated for children and folks who stay away from mints for one reason or another (for example, some of our customers choose to avoid mints while they're following homeopathic protocols). However, the more people try this flavor, the more awesome feedback we're receiving about how delightful it is for people of all ages, regardless of whether or not they need to avoid mints. Some have even gone so far as to say this flavor transforms their normally mundane tooth brushing routine into an activity that they look forward to. And, research shows that orange peel oil (the oil we use to flavor this version of OraWellness Smile) can help protect against the bacteria responsible for dental cavities. (1)

To learn more about each ingredient in Smile, including its source and function in the formula, feel free to check out OraWellness.com/toothpaste

OraWellness Smile is a brand new product, so we’re currently launching it with a very short ‘best if used by’ date of one year. While we anticipate that Smile will last for much longer than a year, we’re choosing to be conservative with our expiry date until we have completed further stability testing to provide us with more data.

How long one tube of OraWellness Smile will last depends on how much paste you use each time you brush, and how much to use depends on your personal preferences.

Each tube contains 120 grams of paste (about 4.23 ounces).

Unlike fluoride and nano-hydroxyapatite toothpastes, there are no potential risks with the microcrystalline hydroxyapatites that we use in our toothpastes. 

And, if you look ‘under the hood’ at OraWellness Smile's ingredients, you’ll find that it's a concentrated formula into which we’ve packed a lot of goodness and functional ingredients.

So while you don’t have to limit yourself to using just a ‘pea-sized amount’ like you would with other pastes that come with potential safety risks, you certainly don’t have to use a huge ‘ribbon’ of our paste like you'd typically see in standard toothpaste ads.

We like to use an amount of Smile that's the size of a pinto bean, and we've found that it works really well to deliver the functional ingredients throughout our mouths while brushing. That amount is right around ½ gram. 

So, since a tube of OraWellness Smile contains 120 grams, there are approximately 240 uses of this ‘pinto bean’ amount, which translates into one tube lasting 4 months for a person who is brushing twice daily. 

But, we know each person is unique, so preferences may vary when it comes to how much toothpaste to use when brushing—some people may prefer to use less, and others more.

For example, the amount you use per brushing might also depend on your flavor preferences. If you like a stronger flavor in your mouth, you might use more paste, and if you like a more mellow flavor experience, you might use less. 

Ultimately, you’re the boss, the MVP, the hero of your oral health journey. We encourage you to experiment with how much OraWellness Smile you choose to use and find the ‘just right’ amount for you. Once you get that dialed in, you'll be able to calculate how long one tube will last you based on how much paste you like to use each time you brush, and how many times per day you're brushing.

This is one of those questions that is so personal, we really don’t feel comfortable answering in some blanket answer. How do we each define ‘safe’? Safe for whom? How can a company state that anything is safe for everyone reading their site without knowing the details of each person, anyway?

If we’re going to live up to our company values of empowering you, our community, with the information and entrusting you to make your own decisions on a given subject, we really can’t answer this question for you. 

First, we’ll share that in general, we do tend to spit and, if desired, rinse after using our products.

We’ll also share that we painstakingly sourced specific suppliers for many of the ingredients in OraWellness Smile to ensure that it contains the purest ingredients possible. That said, like any product that contains ingredients sourced from the earth, OraWellness Smile does have trace amounts of heavy metals in it. However, we also included a very pure form of zeolite called clinoptilolite, which is used by many as an internal supplement to help sequester and bind up heavy metals to remove them from the human body. 

OraWellness Smile also contains certified organic essential oils, which may not be safe to swallow for some of us, particularly if you are pregnant.

Also, we have to point out that while it might be ok if you swallow a bit of the paste from time to time, it was not formulated to be a food product. So, we don't recommend eating it (even though you might be tempted to use it as a dessert topping :) ).

Yes, OraWellness Smile is certified gluten-free, and it's also completely dairy-free.