Soft food particles that get stuck between your teeth or smattered near the contours of your gumline are often easy enough to remove with a gentle rinse with your beverage, or brushing your teeth. Yet there are other times when a hard piece of food like beef jerky, a hard nut, or a seed can become uncomfortably lodged between two teeth or trapped in the gumline.
In a situation like this, it’s important to remain calm. Taking a patient approach to the problem can help safely extract the offending item from your teeth, Dr. Mark T. Morgan offers some of the following insights.
A vigorous rinse with a little saltwater might help to dislodge the object from between your teeth or gums. Even if it fails to remedy the situation the rinse might wash away lingering food debris to give you a better look at the problem.
You should never use toothpicks or sharp, pointed tools to pry the object loose. This could injure your gums or potentially chip a tooth.
Waxed dental floss is the ideal tool for clearing the offending object. The waxy coating allows the strand to slide easier between teeth to worked around the foreign object. You should never force the floss into place, as it could seriously injure your gums. A floss threader loaded with waxed floss might also help you work at it from a different position.
Should these measure fail to extract the offending item, you might want to call 507-825-5403 to have it professionally removed by the dental specialists at Pipestone Dental Center’s dental clinic in Pipestone, Minnesota.