I Don't Floss My Teeth Anymore And My Gums Are More Healthy

A few years a go I had trouble with my gums. I flossed every night but still my gums weren’t healthy.

I went to the dentist and she would say, “You aren’t flossing.”

Well, yes I was, every night in fact but for some reason it didn’t show on my teeth. When you are doing what you are supposed to with no results you soon figure why bother?

Scrubbing away my gums

Since the flossing wasn’t doing the job I started scrubbing my teeth harder and longer thinking that would get them cleaner and toughen up my gums. I used a Colgate soft toothbrush but it was not soft enough and soon I had gum loss so bad that I had to have oral surgery to replace the missing tissue.

In case you don’t know the procedure, they take a piece of flesh from the roof of your mouth and sew it to the area around your tooth roots that are exposed. Sometimes they take tissue from a cadaver. They usually give you a choice and I chose my own skin. If this sounds painful, you are right, it is.

The roof of my mouth was the most sore and took several weeks before it felt normal again. You don’t realize how much food touches the roof of your mouth until it’s raw and irritated.

No medical procedure is pleasant but having dental work done is always worse to me. I can't stand needles or other sharp objects in my mouth.

This procedure is expensive because they have to knock you out completely using anesthetic so you pay a surgeon and an anesthesiologist. You also have to have someone drive you home.

We should all have our kids go to school for dentistry, those guys are doing quite well.

Stimudent toothpicks

After that I knew I needed to do something different. I can only afford to help send so many dentist kids to college or buy him a new car. The toothbrush the dentist gave me wasn’t doing the job so I went to the store to look for a better solution.

I have always been a recycle nut so when I saw Preserve toothbrushes made from recycled yogurt cups I thought I’d try them. They are much softer than the Colgate brand. Apparently there isn’t a universal gage for “soft.” One brand’s soft is another brand’s medium or even hard.

I love the Preserve toothbrushes. They have a program where you mail the used brush back to the company for free so they can recycle them again. The second time round they don’t make more brushes.

I also picked up some dental toothpicks called stimudent. These are angled toothpicks made from orange wood that get between the teeth much better than dental floss. Unlike floss you can angle the pick downwards to get below the gum line cleaning deeper so you get every particle.

Stimudent also forces your teeth apart so it’s easier to get in between to clean better. You won’t have big gaps in your mouth, nothing noticeable just easier to clean.

Here’s what happens; in between your teeth are pockets, if you aren’t cleaning well enough these pockets get larger but even if you are you’ll still have a little bit. A stimudent toothpick can get down in these pockets since you can angle it to clean better. Floss just runs across the top not reaching this area. It’s like a rope stretched across the top of two hills; the river below isn’t touched.

Not only that, you can scrape around the teeth below your gum line getting areas better than your toothbrush bristles do. You can use these while watching television, chatting online or even driving in the car, anywhere. Flossing takes two hands, stimudent only takes one.

Healthy gums

After using these tools for a few weeks I went back for my scheduled cleaning and my dentist was impressed. She said, “I can tell you’ve been flossing.”

I said, “No, I gave up floss since it wasn’t working anyway and now I use Stimudent.” Before I was flossing and she always assumed I was fibbing. So now I don’t floss and she thinks I’m flossing.

My gums never bleed even when I have my teeth cleaned by the dental hygienist. She and my dentist now rave about my healthy gums every time I go in.

Actually, I do still use floss sometimes. Every now and then if I can’t get something wedged between my teeth with the Stimudent like roast beef but that doesn’t happen very often. Most of the time the toothpicks will get it just fine.

I keep Stimudent in my purse, near my computer and in the bathroom. I’m never without them so I can get any food particles out right after I eat. Once you get in the habit of using them you can’t be without them and the more you use them the healthier your gums will be.

Healthy gums means healthy teeth which means less dental work and keeping your teeth.