What Areas to Floss

Video Transcript

"What I'd like to show you now is the different areas that you should concentrate your flossing on. Of course we always know that we're getting in between teeth, so flossing in between teeth can be something that you're always very familiar with. But have you thought that you need to floss at the back of the last tooth of an arch, the back of your last molar for instance? What happens here is that it's a great area, because it's left untouched often times, it's a great area for that bacteria to just sit in the back and create that potential for disease. So you'll often find that people get some of their worst reports on their dental visit on the backs of the last tooth of their arches. So you want to pay particular attention to getting the floss back there. So that's the four teeth, upper and lower, that you'll want to concentrate on, wherever the last tooth is. The other thing you want to look for is people who have crowns and bridge work. A bridge is a appliance that will cover an area of a missing tooth and is attached to two natural remaining teeth. Although this model does not show that bridge, we will pretend if you will, that it has a false tooth that would just look like a regular tooth in the arch. But what it does not have is the root. The root of that tooth is missing. It's a fake or a false tooth. So what you really essentially have is a gateway of bacteria to be able to collect and remain undisturbed there. So what you would need essentially is a floss threader and it's a device that looks very similar to a sewing needle, pardon for having to use that word, but you thread your floss through it and what that allows you to do is, it would allow you to slip underneath that bridge and then you would be able to take your floss and just kind of go over that gum tissue, back and forth, in and out, and that will help to stimulate and massage that tissue in that area. Very, very important for people who have this crown and bridge work because of the fact that if you do not put the importance associated with that to it, you could be left with a lot of irritated gum tissue and problems to the remaining teeth of those in the arch."