I am a dentist (in case you couldn't tell from my User Name). I generally tell my patients to buy whatever is on sale as long as it has fluoride. I can not stress enough the importance of fluoride. I understand that there are those that choose not to use fluoride..to each his own, but from someone that has seen the comparison of people that grew up with fluoride vs. those that haven't, the benefits of fluoride FAR exceed any potential risk. The perceived problems with fluoride have to do with excessive ingestion, which isn't exactly what people should be doing with it. I am not in the anti-fluoride camp. Unless you have pristine oral hygiene, fluoride is critical to dental health. The other thing I stress is to avoid any of the whitening toothpastes. Toothpastes have significant variations in abrasiveness. Abrasiveness is a huge problem in terms of sensitivity and wear. Couple that with the fact that 95% of people brush too hard and you have a recipe for problems. The problem is that toothpaste companies do not freely discuss the abrasiveness of their brands. The whitening one are the worst and they don't really whiten your teeth. They are also significantly more expensive. So it is a lose-lose. Stick with basic fluoride toothpastes. We love Colgate Total, Sensodyne, Pronamel, etc. Hope this helps.
