Discover Your Smile with Dental Floss

Keeping your smile safe includes cleaning your smile on a daily basis. Just as you need to brush your teeth twice a day, it is important to use an effective interdental cleaner such as dental floss to clean your teeth every day as well. Dental floss is used to reach areas that your brush cannot reach on its own. This is extremely important because plaque buildup and harmful acids can often lie between teeth and further contribute to serious oral ailments such as dental erosion and gum disease.

To keep your oral health care optimum and to ensure your teeth remain safe, it is important to always use a product that can accurately clean between teeth. Interdental cleaners are designed to reach areas that brushes cannot. Ideal utensils to use for interdental cleaning include threaded dental flosses and water flossers. Speak with your dentist about product recommendations or suggestions or look for the ADA Seal of Acceptance on product packaging. This ensures that the product will meet the ideal standards for safety and efficiency. Once you have selected your dental floss, try to use it once every day for at least 2 minutes per session, making sure to clean between each and every tooth and behind the teeth in the back row.

If you decide on using threaded floss, always make sure the strand is long enough so you can clean between every tooth without having to use the same section of the strand more than once. This is important to avoid recontamination. Ideally, you will need a strand that is roughly 18“ in length to accomplish this task. To hold the strand effectively, wrap the end of the strand around a finger on each hand. Always floss gently and slowly, making sure to take your time to clean all sides of a tooth. After you’re done, throw out the strand and use a new piece for each new day.

When you are ready to take the next step in your oral health care quest with interdental treatments, we will be here for you. If you are interested in interdental treatments from Gonzalez Dental Care at our dentist office in Redwood City, California, call us at (415) 334-4554. Dr. Alfonso Gonzalez and our team look forward to providing interdental treatments.