Why it's so difficult to floss regularly

If you’ve tried what this guy said on this TED talk and wondered why you still can’t be bothered to floss I’m going to tell you why.

Because you don’t believe it’s important to floss

The actual purpose of a habit is to help reinforce a value or belief that is linked to that habit.

So if you’ve actually tried to floss for 20 days and then still didn’t feel like doing it the next day it’s because you never installed the belief that it’s important. You mentally deflected this belief by other rationalizations, like ‘I can just visit the dentist in a year and it’ll be fine’ or ‘I know someone who never flossed and they were completely fine later in life’. Fair enough, and some of these beliefs could actually be true.

But if your gums are bleeding after every brushing and you have symptoms of gingivitis despite going to the dentist regularly, you have a problem. YOU NEED TO FLOSS.

And I’ll tell you why.

Because there’s a point of no return. A point of no return is any point that you reach where you can’t reverse what you’ve done. And there’s definitely a point of no return when it comes to teeth health. This is the belief you NEED. And if you don’t believe that, you’ll have to lose your teeth to find out or your bad breath will probably scare everyone away and you’ll die a lonely death (I know someone who has this problem : ( ).

The next stage from gingivitis is periodontitis. Periodontitis is when your gum pulls away from your teeth and it gets easier to get stuff lodged in there and then develop possible infections/complications. You cannot reverse periodontitis (as of 2018). You can only treat it. If the disease progresses, gum and bone tissue gets destroyed and eventually tooth loss (source: the internet and this).

My mother has it and it sucks. She has to use interdental brushes and they are as bad as they look. They cause pain and discomfort and she has to maintain using that or else risk further tooth decay. She did not floss as she should’ve and now she pays for this mistake. Since observing this in 2014, I have not failed to floss a single day of my life (twice daily) since the day I learned from the mistake of my mother.

Now for some people. No matter if you floss or not you might still have good / bad teeth. So this advice only applies for people of standard average teeth who actually benefit from flossing. Obviously if you have great teeth health regardless of how you neglect your teeth this advice isn’t for you. Or the flip side where no matter what you do you’ll lose your teeth because you lost out on genetics (I feel sorry for you).

And lastly don’t be one of those people who brush illogically. I’ve also come across people who brush their teeth after dinner and think it’s ok to eat some snacks (like cookies) and then go to bed the following night. If you’re one of those people, nothing can save your teeth.

No really, just think about it. You brush your teeth, teeth are clean. Then you eat stuff that gets lodged in between your teeth. Then you decide to sleep on it leaving said bits in your teeth overnight so they can party in your teeth and invite bacteria into it. That makes no logical sense.

So to conclude:

How to start flossing?

Install these beliefs:

• If you have bleeding gums, don’t let it progress to periodontitis. That’s a point of no return.
• Imagine every hour and every moment that food between your teeth is acting on and facilitating gum disease because you were too lazy to floss.
• The future benefit of the health of your teeth is more important than the temporary discomfort from having to floss. You will improve at flossing over time and this discomfort should fade significantly.
• You don’t want future bad breath.
• You don’t want to be self conscious of bad breath in social interactions.