I’m hungry. Always! Okay, if not always, then most of the times. It doesn’t matter how long ago was my last meal. When I was younger, I learned it was a signal from the body. You eat. You burn calories. And you are hungry again.
Now, I know hunger, for me, is often a memo from the brain—half emotional, half chemical, rarely nutritional. It’s a restlessness disguised as appetite, a low-grade static asking for dopamine, not dinner. It’s not hunger of the stomach, but hunger of the mind: restless, searching, needing to close some loop that never seems to stay shut.
Every season comes with its own obsession.
In the spring it was KitKats.
In the fall, Tesco’s spicy coated peanuts.
In Canada, it was those eight-cookie packs from Dollarama.
In Norway, 3-liter tubs of ice cream from Coop-Extra, or REMA 1000 one-pound bags of chips, or Wasa Dark Chocolate cookies — the kind that crumbled like they were made of guilt and sugar.
Each location offered its own edible antidepressant. Different brands, same neurotransmitters. Different countries, same story: open packet, empty packet.
Because here’s the thing — for an ADHD brain, an open packet is not just food. It’s a task. It’s an unfinished sentence, an unresolved chord. You can hide it, tape it shut, or bury it behind oat milk and celery, but your brain still knows. It keeps a mental GPS pin on it — “packet, cupboard, third shelf, still open.”
You can’t trick it. You can’t forget it. The only way to stop the noise is to finish it.
So I’d finish it. Every time.
Twelve bottles of Sprite Zero in two days. A 500-gram peanut bag gone in one sitting. Every cookie, every chip, until the silence returned — followed, of course, by the guilt.
Then one morning, earlier this year, something shifted. I discovered the smallest possible act of resistance. I brushed my teeth earlier than usual.
That’s it. No great insight, no intention. Just a moment of mint and foam. It wasn’t moral; it was mechanical. And suddenly, the cravings went quiet. The mint turned my mouth into a sterile laboratory. Food suddenly tasted like an error message. Coke Zero became metallic, cookies lost their promise. I opened the cubpoard, looked at the peanut bag, and… nothing. It didn’t call to me the way it did yesterday. The urge had lost its voice.
I laughed. “Brushing your teeth can’t control your hunger.” But when I brushed before eating again the next day — the same thing happened. The mint made the idea of snacking feel wrong, almost like trying to eat inside a clean lab.
And I began reading.
Turns out the sensory theatre of tooth-brushing isn’t just dental hygiene—it’s a brief neurological event. “The mint activates TRPM8 receptors, the same ones that signal coolness after a drink of water. The sodium-lauryl-sulfate in toothpaste dulls sweet receptors and sharpens bitter ones, tricking the tongue into thinking the meal is over before it begins. For about an hour, sugar tastes muted, fat feels greasy, and the pleasure circuits that drive eating quiet down. It’s a gustatory illusion with metabolic consequences.” Sorry, what?
It’s not willpower — it’s biochemistry.
But it wasn’t only about taste.
Brushing became something else: a reset button.
For someone with ADHD, unfinished things — open tabs, half-read messages, open packets — all scream for closure. Chaos is default. Closure is rare. Brushing my teeth gave me that closure, two minutes at a time. It was physical, repetitive, soothing. It made me feel done. That completion—small, physical, definite—gives the same satisfaction that my brain once chased through chips and chocolate.
I began brushing more intentionally.
When cravings hit, I brushed.
When anxiety bubbled, I brushed.
When the fridge started whispering at midnight, I brushed and waited for the foam to quiet it down.
It didn’t make the hunger vanish — but it took the edge off. The open packet could stay open a little longer. The mind didn’t rush to finish it. Mint became my boundary marker: mouth clean, kitchen closed.
Sometimes it felt absurd. A grown man in Reading, armed with a toothbrush against existential hunger. Yet there was something beautiful in the absurdity.
Maybe that’s all control really is — a pause between the want and the reach.
Tooth-brushing became meditation for the impatient: a sensory reset where every stroke was both an act of hygiene and of defiance. Foam, breath, rinse—the most domestic form of mindfulness.
Over weeks, the pattern revealed itself.
ADHD made me seek stimulation; anxiety made me seek certainty.
Food offered both—crunch for the stimulus, fullness for the reassurance.
Brushing offered a counterfeit version: stimulation without calories, certainty without guilt. It was, in neurological terms, a controlled substitution of reward pathways. In human terms, it was peace for two minutes at a time.
It doesn’t fix the underlying restlessness; it just gives it a place to sit quietly. The mint doesn’t silence my dopamine system—it negotiates with it. “Here,” it says, “chew on freshness instead of fear.”
Now, brushing isn’t about enamel. It’s about breathing space. It’s the boundary between the noise in my head and the peace in my body. A ritual that feeds neither hunger nor guilt — only calm.
The body was always fed. It was the brain that was starving
And sometimes, two minutes with mint foam is enough to remind it of that. But, for how long?
People imagine self-control as a grand moral act. It’s rarely that. It’s usually microscopic and a bit ridiculous: a toothbrush, a walk around the block, a glass of water left half-full on the counter.
Maybe that’s what adulthood is for those of us wired like this: learning that control doesn’t come from grand transformations or dietary dogma. It comes from small rituals that create friction between impulse and action. For me, that ritual happens twice a day, mint-flavoured, fluorescent, unglamorous. I need a little more.
The art of brushing teeth, it turns out, is the art of buying a few minutes of peace from a brain that never stops wanting. And sometimes those few minutes are enough to keep the rest of the day intact.
This hits hard! Thank you for writing this.