The Real Reasons to Floss

Your dentist always tells you to make sure you floss, but why? Well there are numerous reasons to keep up with this tedious task. First off, flossing plays a big role in preventing gum disease, it guards against bad breath, and helps keep your teeth looking pearly white. It finishes what a toothbrush can't with often unnoticed benefits.

Everyone knows about using floss to get large bits of food out of your teeth, like that popcorn kernel that seems to be lodged in your gums forever, or the piece of spinach you had no idea was sitting in your chompers. It's quite annoying having to "tongue" the food out, flossing makes it simple. However, the benefits go deeper than that. If you plan to let that piece of food simply fall out on its own, you'll be promoting your own tooth decay through cavities and eventually gum disease, which is not pretty.

Even if it seems there is nothing in between your teeth. There is a good chance something microscopic is, bacteria. They survive off the tiny bits of food you don't get out of your mouth. And by not cleaning your mouth, you're allowing the bacteria to grow and it will eventually inflame the gums, soon leading to gum disease. Gum disease can look pretty disgusting; making your gums bleed easy and eventually your gums will recede away from your teeth. Bacteria can get into tiny pockets between your gums and teeth and make the problem much worse and difficult to fix. Of course some Listerine can also prevent this disease, there are more reasons to bust out the floss

Nearly 40% of your teeth can't be reached with your toothbrush, so with flossing, you can clean that much more plague and get rid of odor causing bacteria. Removing the plague also keeps your teeth looking that great white color. If you're wasting money on those teeth whiteners, all you may need is to do a bit of flossing. Another reason to floss would be to get on your dentists good side, you'll no longer have to hear the speech of needing to floss!

There is also the social side to flossing. It's hard to keep your dignity when you have a piece of food stuck in your teeth that you don't know about, yet nobody has the nerve to tell you about it. So don't let that happen to you, start flossing in your spare time, while you are watching TV, sitting in traffic or are simply bored.