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Confessions of an Olympia Dentist

So I have decided to begin blogging and for my first blog decided upon a topic near and dear to my own personal experience.  To be honest, until I went to dental school, I hardly flossed my teeth.  I recall flossing and brushing rigorously at times on the day of a dental checkup hoping that my dentist wouldn't notice how poor my oral hygiene habits were.  One time, around my early 20's, I had just had my teeth scaled and cleaned by a male hygienist and my gums were bleeding profusely.  I was upset with the hygienists as I was convinced that he had torn up my gums with his sharp dental instruments, not realizing that this was due to the severe gingivitis (gum inflammation) I had.

My dentist would tell me that I need to floss and brush my teeth, and I probably did a few times after the visit, then I would go right back to my usual routine of brushing twice a day.  Now that I've been practicing dentistry for the last 13 years, I find this to be all to common with the majority of the population.  When I ask a new patient if they floss, I'd say that the most common response is a brief pause and then a sheepish "not as often as I should".

All of this changed for me once I began to learn in dental school how much damage I was allowing to happen in my mouth by my neglect of flossing.  Now I can honestly say that it's very rare that a day goes by when I don't floss before going to sleep.  In the same way, I have discovered that when my patients understand why flossing is so critical to great dental health, that I am more effective at motivating my patients to begin flossing.

It's amazing how many full dentures (for patients w/ no existing teeth left) and partial dentures (for patients who have some teeth left and areas of missing teeth) I make each month and I can say that I'm on a crusade to keep people from having to wear dentures.  This ideally begins with proper patient education when the patient is young and still has all of their teeth  On my next blog, I will share the approach that I try w/ as many of my patients as I can to help educate them in a way that I find to be very effective, to get my patients to start flossing so that they don't end up w/ slow, long term gum disease that leads to tooth loss and eventual need for dentures.  As they say,  "Floss only the ones you want to keep"!