“Selfies” is the new trend which has gripped people all over the globe. People click their random photos with their smartphones and upload it on social media. But it is interesting to know that these selfie photos and videos can be a health improving factor in our life. It is true! You can improve your health while shooting your video in a smartphone. As per a study, the smartphone video selfies of brushing your teeth can help people in learning techniques for improving their oral health.
A large number of people are accumulated to have the desire, motivation and ability to brush their teeth properly, but they are not being able to do that properly due to lack of technique. Also, researchers say that the opportunities for learning such techniques are very few.
Lance T Vernon from Case Western Reserve University in the US says that “Often, tooth-brushing is learned and practiced without proper supervision. Changing tooth brushing behaviors – which are ingrained habits tied to muscle memory – can take a lot of time and guidance.”
“Our study suggests that, in the future, recording these selfies can help shift some of this time investment in improving brushing technology. Patients can then receive feedback from dental professionals,” he added.
Right before commencing the study, the researchers had to teach proper and accurate brushing techniques to the participants of the study until they were able to demonstrate it well.
They were being evaluated and scored on the basis of their ways of brushing their teeth along with time spent on brushing and skill mastery, including brushing in a circular motion, forming 45-degree angle while brushing and the correct positioning of the arm.
During the entire study, the participants filmed their brushing using their smartphones propped on stands.
So it was concluded that the very act of recording a video while brushing disrupts the ingrained habits, which made participants conscious of their brushing and reinforced staples of behavior change, leading to memory formation, association and creating new muscle memory, researchers said.
“Video and picture selfies are increasingly used in medical fields to assess, monitor and determine the progression of diseases and effectiveness of treatment – a new area of gathering data known as mobile health, or “mHealth,” said Vernon.”To our knowledge, this is the first report using selfies to study tooth-brushing behavior,” he added.
The findings were published in the Indian Journal of Dental Research.
