Proxy Brush Flossing Aids for Oral Hygiene

Video Transcript

"Hi I’m Dr. Scott Chandler with Silver Creek Dental on behalf of Expert Village.com. This clip is about how to clean those hard to reach places in your teeth with a proxy brush. Now not all of us have been blessed with perfect teeth. A few of us have spaces that are a little bigger than others and just that trap where you tend to get all of your meat caught or something. It’s hard to get it with a toothbrush and regular floss just doesn’t quite seem to do the job. So what we’ve got here are called proxy brushes and you can get them on a handle like this and this one is made by Gum, and you can buy these at just about any drug store. You can get it on a handle here and it’s just a little brush that you use for reaching in between. Here I’ve got an example on some teeth. You see there’s a little bigger space in between some of these teeth. Regular floss just doesn’t quite do the trick. You get this little proxy brush and you go right down in between there and give that a little scrub scrub. Now the first few times you use the proxy brush your gums tend to not be very healthy and they will bleed a little bit. Don’t worry. Keep using it every day, couple of times a day if you need to and within a week or two those gums will get healthy and stop bleeding. Using this proxy brush will get that stuff out that causes cavities in between the teeth and down on those root surfaces where they are really hard to get a filling in place. So this little proxy brush does a great job of cleaning those hard to reach places even in between sometimes those lower front teeth where stuff builds up. Now they make these in a little different shape. This is kind of a just a barrel shape. There is another one that is more like a Christmas tree. It gets a little wider as it goes along and depending on your needs, you can just try the different ones out and figure out what works best for you. These are disposable. The tops just pop right off of these and you buy little replacements and you put them in there. You just use them until the brushes start to get kind of worn. Make sure you rinse them good. They are usually good for quite a few uses. When they start to get ragged, be sure to thrown them away because they are just not doing the job. There is a little pocket size version of the same thing. Kind of a Christmas tree shape and this is just called a proxy brush traveler. This is also made by the same company, Butler Gum and it does the same thing. It does a really good job getting into some of those hard to reach places. Now this one comes with a little cap that you just screw on there, rinse it off, dry it off a little bit, stick in your purse and wherever you happen to be traveling, you just keep it with you to keep that stuff out of your teeth. So those are the proxy brushes. Just go ahead and use them. They will really help you out. "