Once upon a time, before I got braces, I had the most horrible and truly embarrassing thing happen: I got floss stuck between my teeth. I mean really lodged in there. Due to crowding and crooked teeth it just created a perfect spot for floss to shred, magically tie itself in a knot and then lodge between two teeth. I panicked, it wasn’t comfortable and I had horrible visions of it being there forever. I rushed out to the nearest drug store and basically came back with every flossing type implement ever invented, something would dislodge it! Nothing worked. I did, however, come away from that experience with 2 lessons learned/experiences:

First, since nothing I purchased dislodged it, I ended up having to make a trip to the dentist, which is even more embarrassing than it sounds, who dislodged it and gave me a referral to my lovely orthodontist and charged a steep price for the privilege. That was what finally pushed me over the edge and talked me into braces. It wasn’t the headaches, the bite issues or even my teeth wearing down at an alarming rate because of said bite issues, it was the nightmare of getting floss stuck between my crowded teeth again. He’d been telling me for years “you really need to think about this” but both cost issues and just the idea of “braces, at MY age?” kept me away. This, however, was enough. I never wanted to deal with that again!

Most importantly, second, I bought a WaterPik. It was beyond useless in dislodging the floss, but I started using it regularly before I got my braces on and now post braces installation I can’t even express how awesome it is. If you don’t have one, get one. It doesn’t need to be that specific brand, it doesn’t need to be fancy, just trust me on this. Nothing I’ve tried has worked better to get stuff dislodged from my brackets, not even my toothbrush or an interproximal brush. It’s utterly useless at dislodging floss from between your teeth, but to serve its actual purpose? Priceless.

I’ve since upgraded to a somewhat fancier model than my original, cheapest portable model and I’m planning on taking pictures and posting a review of both in the next day or two, in case anyone is curious.