Why daily flossing is so important

Teeth. Gums. Nice when they’re in good shape; terrible when your teeth are falling out, the gums full of puss, bleeding.

“I don’t know why she won’t date me. I think she’s into girls.”

No, she’s just not into guys with dragon breath.

By the way, only recently did I discover that brushing our teeth daily actually came into fashion during WWII.

Before that, the general public used tooth powder (who knew what was used to make that?) or some homemade concoction smeared on a cloth.

For those of us old enough to remember, this is probably why so many of our grandparents had false teeth.

Prior to WWII

Prior to WWII, the area of good teeth, good gums, was the great equalizer. Rich or poor, didn’t matter, good teeth, good gums was more a product of good genes than good dental hygiene.

Money didn’t matter. Almost the entire public didn’t practice dental hygiene. It just wasn’t considered to be a “big deal.”

Dentists were into “drill and fill,” and little else. Preventive dentistry wasn’t practiced by most in the profession.

During WWI, the military had to deal with “trench mouth,” nasty bit of business. So, going into WWII, the military took advantage of the nylon bristles introduced by DuPont in 1938. Attached to a piece of plastic, they cleaned teeth far better than the “teeth bristles” previously used, which mainly consisted of animal hair (hog or boar bristles), which could not only prove unhygienic, but also abrasive and prone to falling out.

The military knew that a soldier, sailor, aviator suffering from a toothache, gingivitis, was not going to perform at 100 percent capacity.

So, the armed forces implemented a policy of daily brushing. After the war, the vets returned home with those daily tooth-brushing habits already in place, passed them on to family members, and the rest is history.

With regard to annual, semi-annual teeth cleanings, courtesy of either a dentist or a dental hygienist, regular teeth/ gum cleanings really didn’t come into fashion until the 1970s. My generation only grew up with brushing our teeth before bed. The only time we ever saw the dentist was to fill a cavity, pull a wisdom tooth.

No one flossed, nor were we taught to do so.

By the 1990s, getting your teeth cleaned, for many people, was just part of good hygiene.

The only thing still lagging far behind dental recommendations — flossing one’s teeth DAILY.

Decaying Bacteria?

As one grows older, good dental hygiene becomes even more important due to the strange correlation between healthy gums and a good heart.

It all has to do, at least in great part, between the bacteria that’s allowed to grow inside the mouth, and the parts of it that get into the bloodstream, which can then affect the heart.

Here’s what Harvard Health has to say:

“While not a direct causal relationship, studies show that individuals with poor oral health, particularly gum disease, tend to have a higher risk of developing cardiovascular issues like coronary artery disease, stroke, and heart failure.” Compared to that bit of cardiac misery, taking care of our teeth seems like a walk in the park.

Compared to a stroke? Heart failure?

Yeah, compared to that.

Still, today, surveys show that only approximately 1/3rd of the U.S. adult population flosses daily, which is really the secret to good dental hygiene.

If you floss daily, with an occasional day missed, then you will maintain good gums for the rest of your life.

It only takes maybe a minute, no more than two to do it right.

If you get into the habit, here’s how to keep it up, because it’s easy.

When you floss, what you’re actually doing is removing those bits of food stuck between your teeth that a toothbrush won’t remove.

That’s why you take the floss and move the string up between the teeth and then down the side of one tooth, then the other. Whatever is stuck between them will be removed.

Here’s the trick to doing it daily. In fact, if you keep this thought in your head, you’ll be upset if you miss a night of flossing.

Look at it like this — if you don’t floss, the bit of burger, or chicken steak, or chili meat, or breakfast taco you had 12 hours ago is going to stay stuck between your teeth while you sleep, slowly decaying, attracting hordes of bacteria into your palette.

Morning breath?

Now you know what causes it.

If you had flossed, you wouldn’t have it.

“Wendorf, why are you writing a dental column?”

Because I think I came up with the secret to motivating more people to floss daily. Just a third of the public, in today’s advanced medical age, floss daily, which isn’t near what it should be when it comes to only taking maybe two minutes a day to really clean our teeth, our gums.

At least half of us should be flossing daily, especially since it plays such a crucial role with regard to good heart health, fewer strokes.

The secret:

Just keep thinking about that food decaying in your mouth, stuck between your teeth, like rotten meat, which is what it really is unless you use some dental floss to remove all of it before bed.

That trick worked for me; it should work for you.

Face it — the older we get, the better we need to care for our body. It’s the only one we have, and that includes oral hygiene.