Your Smile’s Dark Side Can Hurt You!

BANGING THE HEAVY HONDURAN MAHOGANY EXECUTIVE GAVEL ON THE HUGE AND HIGHLY GLOSSED, PRISTINE, AND POLISHED JAPANESE CHERRY BOARDROOM TABLE, the top management at the HSR, votes and seconds all proposals that improve and maintain your ”life feels so sweet, and my smile feels so sweet, too“ smile!

Yes, there are parts of your smile where the sun doesn’t shine!

And those hidden, hard-to-get-to areas are mainly between the teeth and under the gums.

The teeth and gums usually are so anatomically tight together that photonic light can’t get into and reveal the inside of those dark, hard-and-soft-tissue areas.

And I tend to think that the microbes in our mouths don’t want the toothbrush and floss nosing around in their businesses—because they want to multiply and prosper—just like we humans want to!

Those intimate gingival areas are the innermost, warmest, most opportunistic, and most microbiologically active interfaces of the mouth.

These malicious microbiological enemies do their dirty deeds in the shadows, where no one can see them, and work out their grand schemes to take over and deteriorate our “oralas!”

These are also the same areas where the toothbrush—powered or manual—finds difficulty in penetrating into, and disrupting the continually-growing oral biofilms that take up residence there.

Interdental aids, including floss (waxed or unwaxed) need to be used early and often to remove plaque where the eyes can’t visualize. 

If the American Dental Association’s Healthy People 2010 survey is to be believed, only 50.5% of people (almost 150 million of our current 313 million people) in the United States pick up and use floss daily.

The report does not say what percent of that group uses floss toothpicks vs. floss string. Or if the average person’s flossing technique removes subgingival plaque sufficiently.

That same survey states that 10% of Americans never floss—that’s almost 31 million people, with unbearable breath! Do you know one?

  

Cleaning between the teeth with floss toothpicks can be of value, but they only “stir up” the material found sloshing around between the teeth.

String floss can actually remove between-the-teeth material alba as one pulls the floss out through the side from between the teeth.

Washing the hands well with hot water and soap, before using floss and cleaning the teeth, is highly recommended, so germs won’t find their way into your mouth through dirty fingers! Or just use gloves!

The author believes that before floss became more readily available to the consuming public during the late 19^th Century, everyone had bad breath! It was just a matter of how bad…could one knock a painting off of a wall just by toxically breathing on it?

So, floss first, then brush, then rinse, with an appropriately revitalizing mouthwash!

When you close your mouth, and it becomes dark inside, do the plaque microbes get up and dance on the tongue, making faces, and clowning around until you open your mouth again?

Don’t believe me when I say that dental plaque is the sworn enemy? A convincing post!

May you have many…is darkness always on the other side of light?... are our smiles the same in our parallel universes?...if we were to roll up all of the floss used by everyone in the world in a year, it would be much larger than Pee Wee Herman’s aluminum foil ball!.…smiles!