Remembering to Floss: Five Tips to Help You

Did you know flossing actually extends your life expectancy as well as keeps your mouth clean of bacterial infection? By flossing, you not only prevent gum disease—which has a list of health side effects as well—but you can prevent heart disease too.

One sure way to tell if you have a bacterial infection in your mouth is to see if you have inflamed gums. With inflamed gums, bacteria can find its way into your arteries and stay there for a while, causing plaque. Inflammation can also trigger clot formation. Clot formation can then decrease blood flow to the heart. Your heart will have a hard time doing its job when that happens, which can lead to heart disease or heart attacks.

Sounds pretty awful, doesn’t it? Are you reconsidering the importance of flossing yet?

Make It a Habit

If you’re thinking, But what if I can’t ever remember to floss? not to worry. I often forget to floss, too, so I have to make myself remember. Here are some of my favorite tips to help you remember as well:

– Make sure you have some floss. You have a lot of different choices—strings, ribbons, floss sticks, flavored, unflavored, etc. Pick out your floss and have it handy. And if you run out of floss, force yourself to go get more! I went several weeks without flossing—after being extremely consistent—just because I ran out of floss. Set a reminder to pick some up from the store.

– Make sure it’s visible. Nine times out of ten, the reason I forget to floss is because it isn’t in my line of vision where I can be reminded of it every day. Put your floss next to or on your toothbrush so you remember. Another helpful tip is to place floss dispensers around your house, in your car and at the office so if you forget to floss, you’ll have floss with you when you do remember.

– Make a calendar or set a reminder. One option would be to hang a calendar or to-do list in your bathroom reminding you to floss. Or you can use the checklist, notes or reminders on your phone to remind you of this daily task. (Don’t just type it into your phone though; make sure there is an alarm that will go off reminding you).

– Make yourself seek accountability. This may sound silly, but not flossing is no laughing matter. Ask someone, a friend or family member, to remind you to floss. That way if you decide to skip or if you forget, there will be someone around you who will keep you accountable.

– Make it a habit. After you have been flossing daily for a few weeks, it will become a habit and you will remember to floss instinctively.

Flossing Properly

Now that you know how to remember to floss, you might consider if you are flossing properly in the first place.

– Take a piece of floss about 18 inches long—the length between your elbow and the tips of your fingers. Leave about two inches between your hands and wrap the floss around your index and middle fingers on both hands.

– Slide the floss between two teeth, then wrap it around one of the teeth into a “C” shape around the base; gently slide it under the gum line. Wipe the tooth two to three times from base to tip.

– Floss the sides of both teeth. Use a new section of the 18-inch piece of floss for each tooth so you aren’t spreading the plaque you just removed.

– Once you are done flossing, brush your teeth. By brushing your teeth after flossing, you ensure you have removed any loose bacteria released from flossing.

Other tips: Make sure you floss every day. It’s usually best to floss at night before going to bed so any plaque that has built up between your teeth won’t sit in your teeth all night. And finally, make sure you are spending a good amount of time flossing each night. It doesn’t take long, but you need to be spending at least two minutes flossing. Then you can add a few more minutes brushing your teeth. That’s about five minutes each evening before bed, which is way better than lying in a dentist chair for several hours having your teeth extracted and dentures fit in, don’t you think?

Natasha Gayle is the senior writer at 1Dental — a Better Business Bureau-accredited company that sells discount dental plans. We seek to provide affordable dental plans to those who are looking for a more affordable option for their dental care, and provide our customers and the general public with important dental and health tips they can apply to their everyday life at www.1dental.com/blog.

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