It’s no surprise to dentists to hear from patients that flossing isn’t happening on the daily. However, this is a cause for concern considering that if you rely solely on brushing to clean your teeth you are missing cleaning a large portion of your teeth and this leads to gum disease, tooth decay and even halitosis otherwise known as bad breath.
Flossing should be an integral part of your dental health routine along with brushing. You should be flossing once a day, either in the morning or night, or even after lunch, for at least two minutes. It’s not just adults who need to floss, kids should start cleaning between their teeth as soon as they have two teeth in contact but until the age of 10, it’s best if the parent does the flossing as younger kids don’t have the manual dexterity needed to floss effectively.
Here are three tips you can follow…
Tip 1: Wind about 45cm of floss around your middle fingers and rest it across your thumbs and index fingers.
Tip 2: Use a gentle up-and-down motion that goes down one side of the tooth, just under the little collar of gum and then back up the other side.
Tip 3: If you’re not sure about the right technique, have a chat to your dentist who can show you all the right flossing moves.
There are other methods to use when it comes to flossing which our dentist at Coomera Dental Centre can discuss with you. Whichever way you choose to do it, it’s important it gets done as this can save you time, money, anxiety and long dental appointments to fix the damage.