Apart from brushing your teeth, add flossing to your daily dental care routine to remove deposits of food that form harmful plaque in the spaces between your teeth. Dentists say flossing helps reduce tooth decay and prevent gum disease.
Here is how:
- Use a length of about 45 centimetres of floss. Wind one end around a finger on your left hand. Wind the other end around a finger on your right hand.
- Keep the floss taut between the two fingers and gently guide between the first pair of teeth. Be careful not to cut down into the gum.
- Side the floss up and down one tooth and then up and down the side of the other tooth to dislodge all bits and pieces of food wedged between them.
- Repeat this for every tooth, including the back surface of your last molar.
- As you move from one tooth to the next, wind the used floss onto one finger and release clean floss from the other finger.