“The toothbrush that I like the best is a Philips Sonicare DiamondClean Smart,” Auerbach says. “As many times as I’ve looked into different options, it seems to be the one that I come back to most often.”

He likes that it has a timer and pressure sensor that gives you feedback while you brush: “The pressure sensor matters more than people realize because the more you scrub, the more damage you can do to the enamel, the more damage and trauma you can do to your soft tissues. 

This particular model, Auerbach adds, feels powerful thanks to the sonic action even though it’s built to be gentle on the gums.  

“I’ll brush for the full two minutes,” he says. “I don’t brush aggressively. I let the Sonicare kind of guide me. And it’s slow. It’s deliberate. It’s not rushing. It’s making sure I get every surface and all of that.”

Best of all? “It makes your mouth feel professionally cleaned when you’re done,” he says. “That feeling is basically an everyday feeling when you’re using this.”

“After that — not every day — tongue scraping,” Auerbach says. “I do believe that there is some benefit to it.”

While tongue scrapers have become more popular in recent years, Auerbach has his own perspective on the topic. 

“I don’t want to say it’s overblown,” he says. “It’s not, but it’s spoken about. You have to understand the human body is a beautiful thing. It does what it needs to do on its own most of the time without our help — in fact, in spite of, maybe, our carelessness.”

“As long as you’re well hydrated and your overall oral health is good, it’s very rare that you’re having bacteria living at the base of the tongue that’s not naturally cleaned out by virtue of the way that your salivary flow does it. 

“Though I do it, I’m not religious about it.”

When he does tongue scrape, however, using a metal option is a nonnegotiable for him. 

“I have a good one,” he says. “Metal, for sure. Definitely, 100 percent.”

“Some of them are mass-packaged and produced plastic ones, and you would think that would do the job. In the way that it’s disposable, it’s good because it’s clean, right? That’s a positive,” he says. “But in the sense of how well it’s constructed and how aggressive it is without being dangerous, it’s not as good as a metal scraper, for sure.”

Auerbach turns to a coated floss because the coating creates a gentler, more comfortable experience as the floss glides between the teeth. 

“For regular floss, it’s [Oral-B] Glide,” he says. “It is a coated floss — much, much gentler. Typically, if it’s not coated floss, you have to kind of push harder. If you push harder, you’re at risk of injuring the tissue.”

“Flossing is something a lot of people don’t know how they’re doing or what they’re supposed to be doing or the technique,” he says. “It’s just like, ‘Yeah, you just put the floss between your teeth.’ There’s actually a technique that you need to use, and it’s much better for you, much safer for you, to use a coated floss.”

Although Oral-B Glide is his go-to brand, flossing really comes down to using the tools that work best for you. 

“Some of them glide better than others,” he says. “That actual brand, [Oral-B] Glide, does a good job.” 

But just like a sunscreen you’d wear everyday, what matters isn’t so much the exact floss, but the fact that you’re flossing at all, he says. “I guess it’s really a matter of, are you going to use it more than anything else? Whatever works for you. If you’re going to floss, floss.”

“I think the thing that I would say is the most important and probably overlooked, is a water flosser,” he says. “I feel like the Waterpik, of all the water flossers out there, I find people are most compliant with it. Patients are using it. They use it consistently. They love it.”

He likes it because of the different pressure settings, which are ideal if you’re sharing the device with someone (it comes with individual tips). 

“This water flosser works really well because of the multiple settings that it has in terms of pressure,” he says. “Some people have really sensitive gums, some patients have sensitive roots, some patients have very fragile dentistry that needs to be taken care of in a way that is very, very special.”

“If you were to add one thing to your routine tomorrow, the Waterpik would be it.”

Using a water flosser helps you protect soft tissue by gently removing everything that gathers between your teeth and gumline, reducing inflammation along the way.

“The more soft tissue inflammation you have, the more bone loss, the more systemic inflammation you have, and the more problems that are downstream that we see from that,” Auerbach says.  “The primary way we do that in the mouth is to keep our soft tissue as healthy as possible. The primary way we do that is by removing as much debris as we possibly can.”

He works his Waterpik in as a final step in his nighttime routine. “I do like to floss first — regular floss — and then I [use the] Sonicare, again for the full two minutes,” he says. “And then I Waterpik, especially around the back, but really all over.”

[Read more: 6 dentists on their favorite water flossers]

At the end of the day, every step in Auerbach’s routine comes back to the same priority: maintaining your oral health. 

“Ultimately, if your mouth is healthy, you’re healthy,” Auerbach says. “And that’s kind of it.”