Cleaning Braces-How to Floss

Dr. Christopher Maulik: My name is Dr. Chris Maulik, I am an Orthodontist in San Diego, California. What I am going to cover now is called floss threaders.

Floss Threaders are used to hold the floss in between your braces. Often times the floss is so soft that when you go to try to put it between your braces, it just won't go through. So these things, almost like what's called a needle threader, it's very similar to that. It's a stiff piece of nylon, so that when you actually attach the floss through here, you can poke it through your braces and pull the floss through. I am going to demonstrate that. The floss threader has a stiff piece of nylon at the end, much better than the soft floss. When you try to push the floss through underneath your braces, you will have a very difficult time, this will be very helpful. You will thread the floss through the floss threader, like this, and then you take the floss and you push it in between your teeth. Because this nylon is nice and stiff, it goes in very easily. From the other side you are going to pull this through. That will pull the floss through and then you grab one end of the floss and you are going to pull that in through, pull the floss threader off.

Then when you floss, you want to make sure that you go in an up and down motion, like this. You don't want to go in a saw like motion, back and forth. You want to make sure that you go up and down, get to tooth in the front and then move to the tooth in the back. You curve it around and you go up and down as you floss. That's the most important part of flossing. You don't want to go too hard but just make sure that you have covered all the areas of the tooth. Then you pull the floss out and then you continue the process.