Celebrate the Joy of Flossing with your friends!
Make your own video to the Can Can music -
"The Flossies Bergere!"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2ccnOXYEsIY
Post it on Youtube as a response to the sample video and we'll link to it here, on Facebook, and on www.flossing.org.
To get your own copy of the music, just send an email to Music@flossing.org.
National Flossing Day (NFD), Nov. 26, 2010 is a perfect day to make your video and celebrate flossing, but you can upload your video in at any time. Next year we'll award prizes to the most popular videos.
Many thanks to Donovan Kuehn and Kenneth Phan for their great flossing in the video!
It's that time of year again - the day after Thanksgiving - 11/26/2010
National Flossing Day!
This year the theme will be "The Joy of Flossing!"
We want to help people overcome their fear-based flossing and move on to a higher level. A level where flossing is done for its own sake - not because of any form of intimidation!
This is flossing done for the good feeling it brings - like when we've washed our car, or taken proper care of ourselves, whether it's our hair, nails, skin or teeth.
This is flossing for the Joy of Flossing (would the French help? - "Joie de Floss").
With the right type of floss (monofilament floss for tight teeth and rare flossers), flossing doesn't need to be trouble, and cleaning up grungy parts of the mouth should make you feel good about yourself. Good feelings about flossing is what will keep people flossing. Terror only works as long as the terror is reinforced (see the cartoon).
Do whatever you can to make flossing a joy and you'll stop being terrorized by flossing horror stories!
Floss On!
Coming up: "The Flossies Bergere" Video Challenge!
(Visit www.flossing.org to learn about National Flossing Day 2009 and previous celebrations.)
The Waterpik is technically called an "oral irrigator." The idea is to use a pulsating jet of water to clean tooth surfaces and between teeth.
The Waterpik has been around since the 1960s, and pretty much just stayed around, without growing very much or going out of business.
In an effort to link itself to the growing interest in dental floss, the Waterpik is now calling itself the "Water Flosser." Some people are referring to this as "Power Flossing."
The company has done studies to compare the Waterpik to flossing and it seems to work, to some extent, but no one but the company is saying it can be used instead of flossing.
Water flossing may be handy for people with braces, and some people may really prefer it to flossing.
It's surprising though that the company's "Patient Education Video" on the newly renamed "Water Flosser" contains a pretty young woman smiling and using the product while dribbling so profusely. Check the video and see if you find it a great education or sales tool.
http://www.waterpik.com/oral-health/videos.html?id=6
One of their other videos "Stop Looking at Your Leftovers" shows a smiley young guy flossing and popping food pieces on his mirror. Later when he uses a Waterpik, he doesn't dribble on camera. The funny thing about this is how messy a Waterpik can be when water gets out of your mouth and starts squirting around the room. If you look at the "Clinical Studies" listed on the website you can see that Waterpiks were more effective at cleaning the facial surfaces (front) of teeth and less effective on the lingual surfaces (back of teeth, where your tongue is). When you turn a Waterpik to face the back of your teeth, it usually splashes water out of your mouth, which probably discourages people from cleaning back there. And you dribble.
Floss on!
Here's one of last year's Flossing Halloween Costumes - The Flossing Vampire. Vampire's teeth may not rot, but if they don't floss, their mouth will smell like the bottom of a coffin! Would Bill Compton on True Blood have a chance with Sookie Stackhouse if he didn't floss? I can't wait until the writers show Bill flossing! Do you have a Flossing Halloween Costume? Send your picture here, and it will also get posted on www.flossing.org. Happy Flossing Halloween!
A few months ago, there was a news article about elementary school children who had supposedly set the Guinness World Record for the most flossers on a single string.
The gimmick of the record didn’t catch my attention (Floss isn’t so costly that it often needs sharing – and who can do any agile flossing with a neighbor so close?) The suggestion that the Guinness Record people were involved did catch my eye.
About 10 years ago, preparing for the first National Flossing Day, I asked the people at Guinness World Records (http://www.guinnessworldrecords.com/) about setting the record for the most simultaneous flossers. As you can read in their response, they wouldn’t authorize a flossing record. Brushing records seemed ok – but no flossing.
Had Guinness Records changed their tune?
Looking into the Guinness web site and some of their books, there was no sign of any floss/flossing records that they had approved.
Closer inspection of the kid’s flossing record eventually revealed that it was authorized not by Guinness, but rather the newcomer: “Universal Record Data Base” (URDB.org).
The URDB is a pop group, based in NYC, with a web site and a flare for publicity.
In contrast with the Guinness Records org, the URDB will authorize just about any record.
Here’s a short list of a few I found quickly on their web site:
Fastest Pronunciation Of The Word "Fresh" While Holding A Watermelon
Largest Group To Complete The Wave And Apply Lip Balm
Largest Group To Inhale Helium And Sing "I Think We're Alone Now" While Hogtied (18 people)
It seems that a lot of people dream of being record setters – and the URDB is willing to indulge just about every last one of them.
If anyone finds that Guinness really has authorized a flossing record – please send word.
If you read about a URDB floss record – no need to rush and tell anyone.
Is this your flossing story? http://theoatmeal.com/blog/floss We at the NFC hope to help people overcome their fear-based flossing and move on to a higher level. A level where flossing is done for its own sake - not because of any form of intimidation! This is flossing done for the good feeling it brings - like when we've washed our car, or taken proper care of ourselves, whether it's our hair, nails, skin or teeth.
This is flossing for the Joy of Flossing (would the French help? - "Joie de Floss").
With the right type of floss (monofilament floss for tight teeth and rare flossers), flossing doesn't need to be trouble, and cleaning up grungy parts of the mouth should make you feel good about yourself. Good feelings about flossing is what will keep people flossing. Terror only works as long as the terror is reinforced (see the cartoon).
Do whatever you can to make flossing a joy and you'll stop being terrorized by flossing horror stories!
After many years of very average dental hygiene and barely any flossing, something finally "clicked" for me after getting 6 fillings recently. I have finally changed my ways and become fairly fanatical about tooth cleanliness. I keep a toothbrush and floss in my desk drawer at work, and I find that after every meal, I feel an urgent need to floss and brush, in order to remove all debris and have a clean mouth again. it's kind of like the instinct to wash your hands after digging in the dirt.
I have now got a routine in which I brush and floss at 10am (to clear breakfast debris), then again at 2pm (to clear lunch debris) and after dinner (8pm). My question is do you feel this is too much flossing? I have gaps between my teeth that are just large enough to keep debris between them, so I know you are supposed to floss once a day. But I have this huge urge to get that debris out soon after eating. What do you suggest?
Best wishes,
3x a day flosser in NC
Dear 3XADFINC,
Thanks for your question!
I have to start off by saying that I am also a 3x a day flosser, so you have an idea where this is going.
Here’s the the basic question that we need to consider: Will flossing 3x a day harm your teeth and what problems could it cause?
All those readers with tight teeth could probably go read elsewhere at this point, since they have no idea how annoying it is to have a substantial part of a meal stuck between your teeth after eating. Of course, as you’ve described, they also don’t understand how satisfying it is to get that jammed food out from between teeth with floss. As I’ve said before, tight teeth don’t catch much food and they don’t have much room for floss. Those “tight” teeth still need a periodic cleaning with a non-shredding floss, since bacteria and plaque buildup can happen even in the small spaces between the tightest teeth.
Let’s keep this brief – too much flossing really isn’t a problem, but “improper” flossing can erode enamel.
What is “improper” flossing?
Well, floss can serve two useful roles:
1. Removing large pieces of food stuck between teeth, and
2. Cleaning food residues from spaces between teeth where brushing won’t reach.
“Improper” flossing involves pointless rubbing floss against the enamel. This is why you’ll hear warnings about “don’t saw back and forth” with floss.
How do we know that “sawing” with floss will hurt enamel? Well, you can check these links for two examples (and there are others) of prisoners using floss to saw through metal bars to escape (1,2). Let’s face it, if sawing with floss can cut metal, the enamel on your teeth can get “groovy” with too much sawing. The grooves you can cause with floss might be a cosmetic problem, but more important is the damage they do to surface enamel and the spaces they make for decay-producing bacteria.
You might also be interested to learn that there are a few anthropology studies that report finding grooves on the teeth of ancient skeletons that suggest damage from repeated rubbing with fibers (ie. floss). One report is based on skeletons from Pakistan (3) and the other from the prehistoric natives in the western US (4) – so this isn’t a rare or localized misuse of floss.
What to do? Clean the big pellets of food from between your teeth when they bother you. A short forward or back motion may be needed to dislodge debris – but no sawing! To clean the spaces between teeth, pull the floss up and down along the teeth. This up and down cleaning between all your teeth isn’t the type of flossing you need to do very often. Once a day for this type of thorough flossing will be fine to keep your teeth really clean.
Thanks again for your question!
Floss on!
Chip T.*
(Dr. Chip Tartaroff answers flossing questions for the National Flossing Council. See his past replys on www.flossing.org.)
