This video will go through some tips on how to floss.

But before we go into that, we want to ask the first questions is that , “Why do we floss at all?” It is well known that when you’re brushing your teeth, your toothbrush cannot get in between your teeth very well. That’s why in this photo(0:30), you tend to get a lot of bacteria in between your teeth where it’s hard to get to, whereas toothbrushs can clean the outside of your teeth very well. Now, if you’re not cleaning the bacteria between your teeth very well, the issue that you may run into is that you’ll get some gum disease. For example, you’ll see the redness of the gums, swelling in between your teeth here or you may end up getting holes that go through the side of the teeth, like these ones or these ones(1:00).

Flossing is basically just another tool that we use to clean in between your teeth that get rid of the bacteria in those hard-to-get-to areas. Now if you’ve had gum disease and see that your gums are receding between your teeth, that means you’ll see a lot of gaps between your teeth like these ones (1:25), I find that using an interdental brush or Piksters, these ones (1:32), are better tools to use than flossing. But for a lot of patients where the gums are filled up between your teeth very well and you’re not able to pass in the smallest Piksters or interdental brush, then that’s mean that you have to revert to using floss.

And here are the tips on how to floss. So let’s go through the three tips on how to floss your teeth.

So first of all, you want to grab some floss, a long piece of floss. The first tip would be to wrap the floss around your middle finger, so that way you’ll get some tension and then use your thumbs or your index finger to guide the floss. So some people may prefer to use their thumb or if you want to get through the back of your teeth, really far back, you can use your index finger to guide that back towards the back of the mouth, or you can do a combination of both. For example, sometimes when you use that on your front teeth. So that’s the first tip.

The second tip is to make sure that when you push through the contact between the teeth that you don’t do a seesaw action like this (2:48). When you do this you’ll find that you’re cutting your gum and the gum’s starting to bleed. What you’re supposed to do would be to push through the contact of the teeth and you’ll hear the little click like that. Get as far down underneath the gum as you can and then wipe up. So it’s a wiping actions on the side of your teeth, it’s not a seesaw. You’re going to push through with the click, wipe against the side of the tooth and then up.

The third tip would be that you have to go through the contact between these teeth, each contact twice, because the first time that you’re going in, you’re going to wipe onto one side. So in this case, it’s the tooth in front, up and the second time you go through the same contact you’re going to wipe on your back teeth like that (3:50), because the contacts between each of your tooth is a little bit curved, so you need to make sure that you go in, wipe onto the side of one tooth and then the second time to wipe on the tooth at the front.

Sometimes you may be using floss on the stick instead. For example, the product might look something like that (4:14). You have a floss on the handle, which is make it a little bit easier instead of wrapping it around your finger. The principle or how you do it’s still the same. You’re still going to be pushing it in between the contact, lean against one side of the teeth and then wipe as you pull out. That’s how you use the floss to clean between your teeth.

I hope this information in this video has been useful and we’ll see you at the next video.