How does OraWellness Smile Toothpaste compare to OraWellness Shine Tooth Powder? Also, why does Smile have more ingredients than Shine?

Shine and OraWellness Smile have similarities and differences.

Both Smile and Shine contain remineralizing MCHA as the #1 ingredient in their formulas.

We use the same cattle-bone-based microcrystalline hydroxyapatite mineral/protein complex as the main ingredient in both our Shine tooth powder and in the Paleo versions of our Smile toothpaste (but not in the Vegan versions of Smile). Because of that, both Shine and Paleo Smile formulas are very supportive for remineralization, and we do believe that Paleo 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.

Also, Shine and all of our OraWellness Smile pastes contain the same non-GMO xylitol to further enhance your remineralization efforts.

Shine powder contains a few extra ingredients that we chose not to include in the Smile paste line: magnesium carbonate and calcium lactate (which both help support remineralization), and baking soda (which, like the white kaolin clay that’s in both Shine and Smile, helps gently polish away surface stains on teeth).

The Smile paste line also contains other ingredients to further support oral health, like clinoptilolite to help detoxify the mouth.

And obviously, the delivery of these two products is different, because Shine is a powder and Smile is a paste. And that delivery difference really impacts how many ingredients are needed to formulate the product.

The main reason why Smile toothpaste has so many more ingredients than Shine tooth powder is because it’s more complex to formulate a creamy texture than it is to simply mix dry powdered ingredients together. For example, for a paste, we need to offset dry ingredients by incorporating ingredients that provide moisture and help produce a creamy texture, like water, organic coconut oil, and organic MCT oil. And, those ‘wetter’ ingredients need other ingredients that help prevent the oils and water from separating as a tube sits on a countertop or shelf, that provide a ‘just right’ thickness so the paste isn’t too runny, etc. There are just more considerations that are required to make a paste vs. a powder (or a blend of oils, like our HealThy Mouth Blend).

If you’d prefer to keep using whatever products you’re accustomed to using instead of trying Smile toothpaste, that’s ok. Plenty of our community members are happy to stick with Shine and/or the HealThy Mouth Blend.

As another option, some people are choosing to use Shine and/or HealThy Mouth Blend in conjunction with Smile toothpaste, or they’re adding Smile to their toolkit in order to add variety to their oral hygiene routine (ex: brush with Shine and the Blend at night and brush with Smile in the morning). That’s perfectly ok, too.

Yet another option is that for simplicity and ease of use, some folks are choosing to stop using Shine and/or Blend entirely and just switch over to Smile toothpaste instead. If that appeals to you, then you might find it helpful to know that the Paleo Cinnamony Mint Smile toothpaste is almost like a combination of our HealThy Mouth Blend and Shine, so this paste very well may be our most well-rounded product yet. (But as an aside, we’ll share that although we enjoy the refreshing Cinnamony Mint flavors of our paste, the Orange Vanilla is a real treat to use, because it almost tastes like you’re brushing with frosting. 😍)

So, you have lots of options, and it’s up to you to decide what would work best for you!

To see each ingredient in our Smile toothpaste as well as the role it plays in the formula, feel free to check out OraWellness.com/toothpaste.