Beyond Brushing: 5 Invaluable Benefits of Daily Flossing

Dental care is vital for your long-term overall health, and you can preserve teeth through regular checkups and everyday tasks like brushing and flossing. Brushing is important, but let’s look at the reasons to floss teeth every day.

Practicing proper dental hygiene is critical to keeping your whole body healthy, as neglecting to care for teeth and gums can lead to heart disease, endocarditis, pneumonia, complications during childbirth, and Alzheimer’s disease over many years. You can avoid dental problems like tooth decay, periodontitis (gum disease), and oral cancer by combining regular visits to your dentist and taking care of your teeth at home with brushing and flossing.

Brushing is critical in eliminating plaque and other particles from collecting on teeth and leading to infection and disease; however, flossing also plays an essential role in protecting dental health. To understand the benefits of flossing and brushing to protect teeth, let’s explore some basics of how flossing works, the different techniques, and why it helps prevent dental problems.

Dr. Ayed Hawatmeh and his dedicated team at Bravo Dental Group can help if you live in the Brea, Banning, Corona, or Hemet, California area and you’re trying to keep your teeth their healthiest.

Flossing basics

Brushing is essential to clearing plaque to keep it from eroding the enamel on teeth, but it can only affect the areas it touches, meaning it can’t clean between teeth, which is where flossing comes in. Dental floss is a nylon string placed between teeth to dislodge food stuck there, which keeps bacteria from collecting and hammering your mouth. You can also use water flossers, dental picks, or even tiny brushes at least once daily.

Flossing techniques

If you use the traditional nylon floss, about 18-24 inches of it will suffice, and you probably need a mirror to ensure you get the tooth you’re trying to clean. When using it or other types of nylon flossing-like dental picks, be sure to floss up and down teeth along both sides. Use the same method for each tooth until you’ve cleared as much food and particles from your mouth as possible.

With water flossers, you can get material between teeth that other methods miss, and they can help with bad breath, improve gum health, and remove plaque.

Advantages of daily flossing

Here are the overall advantages of flossing in addition to brushing:

1. Helps to clear plaque

As mentioned previously, water picks are great for helping with plaque on teeth, but all types of flossing help to manage this problem between teeth. Plaque develops into tartar over time, which is hard and collects in your gum line.

2. Reduces risk of dental caries

Keeping food and other particles that can get trapped between teeth from doing damage reduces your risks of the enamel eroding, which leads to tooth decay and many other problems.

3. Prevents gum disease

Flossing can also help gums by keeping the space between teeth clear of harmful materials, lowering your chances of periodontitis or other gum problems.

4. Helps with bad breath

Without food that can get trapped, there is less material for bacteria to develop oral issues like bad breath, called halitosis. The other dental problems mentioned can also lead to bad breath - flossing can prevent that.

5. Reduces risk of heart-related issues

When you have fewer incidents of the above-mentioned dental conditions, you lower their effect on your cardiovascular system, avoiding several heart-related problems.

Brushing is vital to dental health, but so is flossing because it can reach places brushes can’t and can help lower your risks of many dental illnesses. If you have concerns over the best ways to care for your teeth or have dental problems that need attention, make an appointment with Dr. Hawatmeh and his Bravo Dental Group team today.