Everyone knows how important it is to floss every single day, but are they doing it the right way? If your gums are still bleeding when you visit the family dentist, chances are that you are not doing it right. It will help to know these tips to help ensure that you're flossing correctly.

Know Why You Need To Floss

The whole point of flossing is to get the floss into the places that your toothbrush cannot normally reach. Brushing and not flossing every day means that you are missing a part of your teeth that could be covered in plaque. However, your flossing technique is just as important as your brushing technique.

Use Plenty Of Floss

A common mistake is to not use enough dental floss to get the job done right. You want to take about a foot and a half worth of floss so that you can wrap it around your fingers with plenty of floss to spare. If you do not use enough floss, you won't be able to form that tight grip and you'll not be able to scrub your teeth with the floss. You can then easily unwrap the floss between your teeth to move to a clean piece of floss. 

Wrap The Floss Properly

A good technique for wrapping the floss is to spin it around your index finger or middle finger. This will then give you the leverage that you need to push down on the floss with your thumb or index finger and guide it between all of your teeth.

Slide The Floss Up And Down

You do not want to use a sawing motion to move the floss back and forth across the tooth's surface. You actually want to wrap the floss around the tooth and move the floss up and down. This will help scrub the surface of the tooth and remove the plaque from it. You should be moving the floss slightly into the gum line to remove the floss from the pockets of your gums. Just make sure not to force it too far. 

Move The Floss Systematically

It is easy to lose track of which teeth you have flossed between if you do it haphazardly. It's a good idea to get into a habit of flossing your teeth in the same order every single day, so that you get into a routine where you do not accidentally miss any teeth. You'll even want to use floss on the backside of your rear molar, even though there is no tooth on the other side. 

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