What Is a Water Flosser? Are They Good?
What is a water flosser?
Needlessly to say, flossing is not everybody’s favourite dental hygiene method. Flossing requires time and it isn’t very convenient. A thin piece of tape can feel quite ‘cringey’ being forced in between your teeth and down to your gum. It comes as no surprise that water flossers are becoming increasingly popular in recent months. The best water flossers should be easy to use, powerful and effective.
A water flosser, is effectively a low powered jetwash. To use it, you simply aim it between your teeth (slightly downwards at the gum) and press a button. Once pressed, the flosser will shoot out bursts of water or mouthwash at high speed. This water or mouthwash will wash out bits of food and bacteria from in between your teeth, just as a normal piece of flossing tape would. Combining this with regular brushing and mouth washing, your teeth should be as healthy as can be!
Are they good?
Theoretically, you would think that the conventional flossing tape can’t be beaten. Most dentists would agree. Holistically, bearing in mind the general belief of conventional floss, a water flosser is quick, convenient and less ‘cringey’. Making it the preferable choice. This is because you are better off using a water flosser once a day, than conventional floss once a month. If you are part of the minority of people that do floss on the regular, then maybe stick to the good old tape! Dentists do advise flossing with the tape and then rinsing with the water flosser, but that’s up to you!
When your gums begin to bleed during flossing this is a good sign that your flossing it working. Bleeding gums whilst flossing indicates that you are removing bad bacteria from the gumline. After about two weeks of regular flossing, you can expect that bleeding to be reduced, if not ended. Having personally used a water flosser, I have found that it does not cause this bleeding as much as floss tape. This could potentially indicate that I either have healthy gums, or that the water flosser is not as effective as conventional tape. for the record, the water flosser I use is the Sonicare Airfloss/Airfloss Pro.
Best water flossers
According to Electric Teeth the best water flossers are as below:
- Waterpik WP-660
- Sonicare Airfloss/Airfloss Pro
- Waterpik Ultra Water Flosser
- WP-450 Waterpik Cordless Plus Water Flosser
- WF-03 Waterpik Cordless Freedom Water Flosser
- Broadcare Portable Water Flosser
- Panasonic EW1411W Cordless Oral Irrigator
- Oral-B Oxyjet
Dental Opinions
Notley Dental Care believe that flossing is best done when used with flossing tape rather than the water flosser. They do agree that the water flosser is an excellent complement to the water flosser though!
Summary
All in all, if you don’t currently floss and you feel having a quick, convenient easy way of flossing will encourage you to clean the gaps between your teeth more regularly, then we’d recommend a water flosser. If you currently use a floss tape on the regular then the water flosser may not be a worthwhile investment. Bear in mind though, that dentists would recommend using a water flosser and tape as each one has different cleaning properties that complement each other.