Do you floss every day? Flossing is an essential part of excellent dental health! Let us tell you why this habit is so important, and how to make the most of your daily flossing routine.
Why Flossing Matters
Flossing is an important part of a great dental hygiene routine, as it allows you to clean the surfaces between the teeth, which are missed by brushing alone. There are several benefits that come with getting your teeth 100% clean!
The most important thing that flossing does is remove harmful bacteria and plaque from those hard-to-reach crevices between the teeth. This, in turn, reduces cavities and the risk of gum disease.
Cleaning between the teeth also helps to prevent bad breath by cleaning out food particles and bad breath causing bacteria.
Flossing also saves money! The combined efforts of brushing and flossing are the essential parts of preventive dental care, which reduces oral health problems and complications and ends up saving people expensive trips to the dentist.
When Does Flossing Help
Now that you’ve decided that it’s important to floss, it’s time to decide when to floss. This is actually a pretty easy decision because it turns out that the best time to floss is any time that fits comfortably into your daily routine!
As long as you’re doing a thorough job with your brushing and flossing, the order that you do these dental cleaning tasks in doesn’t matter as much as the fact that you’re actually doing them. You also can’t floss too often, so if you feel most comfortable flossing after you brush your teeth in the evening, but also need to floss between meals to remove food from between your teeth, that’s perfectly acceptable—even encouraged.
How to Floss Like a Boss
What matters more than when you floss is how you floss. Flossing correctly will result in thoroughly clean teeth that will make your dentist proud!
Start by winding a long piece of floss around your middle fingers, with more of the floss wound on your non-dominant hand. Use your index fingers and thumbs to hold a length of floss about one-inch long.
Use your fingers to gently wiggle the floss between your teeth in a sawing motion. Wrap the floss around each tooth in a C-shape and move the floss up and down to clean plaque and debris from between the teeth.
Repeat this process for each tooth—and don’t forget to floss around your back teeth, too!
The key to great flossing is to be gentle! Flossing too aggressively will result in pain and bleeding in your gums.