The Sacramento Dentistry Group Replies: Can You Use Yarn for Dental Floss?

In an emergency, will yarn work as dental floss? To find out the answer, the Sacramento Dentistry Group considers a brief history of dental floss and how was used in the past to clean teeth. Woven dental flosses, available today, are an excellent form of dental floss for many people. This article discusses their benefits.

​Recently the website of the Sacramento Dentistry Group received the above question about whether yarn can be used as dental floss in an emergency. Ideally, craft supplies should not be used as a primary tool for dental hygiene. The dentists at the Sacramento Dentistry Group applaud clients with imagination, however, and in this case the answer to the question is a qualified “yes.”

The History of Yarn as Dental Floss

Did you know that one of the earliest forms of dental floss was simply yarn? Silk thread was popularized in the early 1800s and the material was finally marketed as true dental floss in the 1880s. But returning to the subject of yarn, while larger weaves may not fit between some teeth, many yarns were and are small enough to work as dental floss. Indeed, woven dental floss is highly recommended by the Sacramento Dentistry Group, although it can be hard to find. Their website features a number of articles on woven flosses, as well as reviews of different products. Visiting sacramentodentistry.com and searching with the term “woven” will reveal these pages.

The Benefits of Woven Floss

Like yarn, woven floss is stretchable. This trait is not shared by other forms of dental floss, and as a result they are “one size only.” Woven floss goes from larger to smaller, depending on how tightly the user pulls it with the two hands. It also has far more surface area than other flosses, resulting in more plaque, bacteria and food particles being removed during daily oral hygiene. While it can tend to separate when a person’s teeth have little space between them, for most dental patients, especially those with large gaps between their teeth, it is a superior product.

For additional information on various dental subjects, the Sacramento Dentistry Group website has far more pages than found with the vast majority of dental websites. This medical practice invests in its presentation of oral health topics to familiarize people throughout the Sacramento Valley with the benefits of regularly caring for your teeth. For the future, however, their dentists really recommend that clients keep a small box of dental floss or an interdental brush with them at all times to deal with those “food between the teeth” emergencies. It tends to be much more sanitary than unraveling a string from your sweater.

Source: Sacramento Dentistry Group

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