Dr. Tung's Smart Floss

I hate to floss my teeth. All my life I've had a hate-hate relationship with dental floss. The old style waxed dental floss would either: 1) refuse to get between my tightly spaced teeth, or 2) shred in the jagged non-pearly parts in my tightly spaced teeth. Then came PTFE monofilament, a.k.a. Glide®, formerly known as plumber's teflon tape. The new style dental tape slides in much more easily and gets in the gums. But I still was lazy and paid a hefty price of hours in the dentist chair for root planing (extremely unpleasant) as well as money that flew out of my wallet to pay for this procedure. Great if you're a masochist, but not so great if you have better things to do with your money or prefer to get your rocks off some way that's not dentally related.

Even after starting a regular flossing routine, my dentist still commented that my teeth are tough to keep clean. After a thorough flossing and brushing, I can still feel that grittiness from plaque on my teeth. Thinking that maybe the teflon tape is just too smooth, I was at a loss on what to do.

Today, while at Henry's supermarket, I figured I should check out their dental care section. Full of "unwaxed", "natural fiber", and "biodegradable", the final decision was, "to hell with environmentally friendly, I don't want to get a root planing ever again". I finally settled on the fanciest looking floss:




After pulling some of the floss out, I was prepared to be disappointed. Freaking hippies want me to floss my teeth with yarn? This floss is loosely woven, with lots of nylon fibers that are just asking to be caught in the jaggaged parts. I flossed my teeth tonight with Smart Floss. So far so good! When you pull the floss taut, it is thin and slides between teeth. Then when you pull it against your teeth, it flattens out and the numerous crinkly fibers scrub your teeth clean. It performed admirably well on the jagged teeth too. No fibers stuck to my teeth whatsoever. When I run my tongue over my teeth, they feel like they were just cleaned by the dentist. And the floss was soft on my fingers, no purple fingers! I'm very impressed. The final test is at the dentist's in 5 months' time, judged by how much scraping occurs.

Dr. Tung's smart floss costs approximately $3.50 for 30 yards. It comes in a nifty disc container, the outside rotates around to protect the floss and requisite metal floss cutter. The floss is lightly waxed with an unusual but delicious cardamom flavor.