Floss And Toss

A better solution than drill grinding.

- Padmaja Menon

I extracted the dental floss from its reel and proceeded to floss my teeth. The obstinate slivers of food were flicked out and after brushing I felt so cooo!!!!!! Indeed, daily flossing has made my teeth so much healthier. In fact, it has been years since I needed to see the dentist.

Floss... what exactly was that? Dental floss is a cord of thin filaments used in interdental cleaning to remove food and dental plaque from between teeth or places a toothbrush has difficulty reaching or is unable to reach. Its regular use as part of oral cleaning is designed to maintain oral health.

Japanese macaque and long tailed macaques have been observed in the wild and in captivity flossing with human hair and feathers. That's awesome indeed!

Levi Spear Parmly (1790-1859), a dentist from New Orleans, is credited with inventing the first form of dental floss. In 1819, he recommended running a waxen silk thread "through the interstices of the teeth, between their necks and the arches of the gum, to dislodge that irritating matter which no brush can remove and which is the real source of disease."

He considered this the most important part of oral health care.

Floss was not commercially available until 1882, when the Codman and Shurtleff Company started producing unwaxed silk floss. In 1898, Johnson & Johnson received the first patent for dental floss that was made from the same silk material used by doctors for silk stitches.