Look, I am just like you: I am not a fan of visiting the dentist, but when I do, I feel anxiety and stress just knowing those weird tools will touch my teeth. Don’t get me wrong: I love my dentist and I will keep visiting her office because I know it’s for my own good.
One of the things I’ve learned from my dentist is how dangerous plaque is and how impactful it can be on not only teeth but gums as well. The most common symptom is gum inflammation which can lead to gums retreating and periodontitis.
A short definition for periodontitis is that your gums retreat so much from around the teeth that they lose their stability in time, they start moving and eventually fall. Which is awful, right? Fortunately, there’s a set of 2 simple things anyone can do to prevent this from happening:
- Brush twice a day, ideally with an electric toothbrush
- Use floss string before bed
Now, when it comes to flossing, some people don’t like it as much, because it’s time consuming, it requires several strings of floss and sometimes it can be uncomfortable to use since you have to slide that string between each and every pair of teeth.
So what do you do if you hate string floss?
I usually find myself in this category especially after I eat popcorn at night. Flossing when there’s still popcorn kernel residue between your teeth is tricky, right? Fortunately, there’s a much MUCH better solution…
Introducing: Water Flossing
Last time I went to the dentist, she recommended me to look into Waterpik, a water flossing device. This basically sprays a very thin stream of water through a fine tube onto the gum-teeth lining. That stream is basically removing any food residue and, most importantly, bacteria that gets trapped in small pouches right beneath the gum-teeth lining.
Using it is great and is SOOO comfortable as it only requires to you to hold the spraying head as you move along your teeth. You can adjust the pressure and also get creative with what you use to spray. For example, I put a little bit of mouthwash in the water recipient, so I get the great effects of the mouthwash as well. Sometimes I dissolve a bit of xylitol when I run out of mouthwash just to make sure my mouth stays bacteria free over night as well.
I started using this when some regions of my gums started suffering from recession ranging from 4 to 6 mm. My dentist started seeing signs of improvement immediately after I started waterflossing every evening and now, after roughly 2 months of use, I am happy to report minor to no gum recession at all, which is great!
Finally, as I said, my personal choice would be the Waterpik which is approved by the American Dentist Association (ADA) and has more than 14,000 almost 5 star-rating reviews on Amazon – holy cow! That’s what I have been using from the beginning, however, you can choose any other option out there. Just make sure it’s approved by the ADA and there’s a decent amount of customer feedback.
So that’s it folks! Feel free to test this hack and let me know how it worked in the comments section!