Yekaterina Tkalenko brushes her teeth three or four times a day, especially after enamel-insulting tea or coffee; has them professionally cleaned twice a year; and carries floss as if it were as vital as an inhaler. She recently spent nearly $1,000 to have her teeth whitened.
“When I look at a person, no matter who it is, the first thing I look at is his or her teeth and their smile,” said the 34-year-old Muscovite, who works in the tourism industry. “When I see good teeth, I think this person has more chances in life, and he’ll be more successful than a person who has bad teeth.”
In a nation where a generation ago a trip to the dentist happened only when a tooth hurt, families shared toothbrushes, and dental floss was but a curiosity, oral hygiene is the new vogue.
Soviet-era teeth were notoriously bad. In 1991, the average 35-year-old had 12 to 14 cavities, fillings or missing teeth, said Vladimir Sadovsky, vice president of the Russian Dental Association. (Not counting wisdom teeth, adults have 28.)
Toothpaste meant whatever was available. Toothbrushes had hard bristles that cut the gums, sometimes doing more harm than good. Dental technologies were years behind those of the West; the 17-year-old who was crowned Miss USSR in 1990 flew to Philadelphia the same year to have the gap in her teeth closed and a few cavities filled.
Market explodes
But the domestic oral hygiene market has exploded in recent years. Private dental clinics in central Moscow, which have new equipment far surpassing the quality in still-underfunded municipal clinics, are practically around every corner. Pharmacy shelves are stocked not just with the latest blends of imported Colgate and Aquafresh, but yogurt-based paste and paste in flavors like Jazz of Lemon Mint. There are also anti-plaque rinses, fresheners, round flosses, flat flosses, whitening strips, whitening gels and whitening plates, among other things.
According to industry estimates, sales of oral hygiene products in Russia have nearly doubled since 2000. More people are willing to buy high-end items, including electric toothbrushes and Rembrandt toothpaste, which can cost as much as $14 a tube. Tkalenko, a self-described oral hygiene addict, uses another foreign brand that goes for $19.
In large part because of an education campaign in schools, the importance of good oral hygiene is being drilled in at a young age: In a recent art contest in which children illustrated their view of the Russian president, a 9-year-old girl drew a pajama- and slipper-clad Vladimir Putin brushing his teeth in front of the mirror (alongside a toilet made of gold).
Fluoride in the water still is viewed with skepticism here; one Moscow dentist said it causes people’s teeth to turn brown. Still, the Russian government has funded the fluoridation of milk in some municipalities, and with good result. In the southern city of Voronezh, the average 12-year-old had nearly four cavities in 1994, the year the fluoridation campaign began, Sadovsky said. By 2004, the number of cavities was 1.5.
In the U.S., by contrast, nearly 60 percent of those age 6 to 19 have never had a cavity in their permanent teeth.
1990s dentistry
“In 1991, they didn’t know what a dental hygienist was. They didn’t know what dental floss was,” said Giovanni Favero, an American dentist who trained Russians in the early days after the collapse of the Soviet Union and founded the American-Russian Dental Center in central Moscow, where he has worked for 12 years.
Favero, 69, became acquainted with Russian dentistry in the early ’90s when he saw Russian exchange students at his practice in California. One student, who had recently been to a dentist in Russia, came complaining of a toothache. He had 21 cavities, Favero said.
Favero has seen it all in Russian mouths. An X-ray once showed a patient’s broken tooth had been reattached with something that looked suspiciously like a paper clip. More recently, he removed two teeth that were barely hanging by the roots.
Favero and other dentists say the dental craze, which like much here is largely a thing of the well-to-do, is not all for the good. Many clinics are owned and operated not by dentists but by entrepreneurs who care far more about a healthy bottom line than they do healthy teeth and gums.
Andrei Akulovich, a dentist in St. Petersburg who is editor of Dentistry Today, cautioned against all the whitening, especially that done at home, which can damage gums. He wants Russian teeth to become not just whiter, but healthier.
“White teeth,” he said, “don’t necessarily mean healthy teeth.”
