How to Use a Water Pik

Video Transcript

Hello. My name is Melissa, and on behalf of Expert Village, today, we're going to talk about how to prevent a cavity, and how to save your smile. In this clip, we're going to talk about how to prevent a cavity by using a Water Pik. Now, you may have never heard of a Water Pik before. And, basically what it is, is you fill it up with water, and you can buy various tops for it, but they all look like this. And, normally, if you, let's say you have a family of four, they normally, some of them come with slots for two. There are smaller versions of this. This is sort of a family unit. But, you can get different colors. So, each person in the family picks a different color and that's their Water Pik. But, what you do is you put it on the top, you fill this with water, and you click it into the top there. You're going to, after you've filled it with water, turn this on after it's been plugged in, and you're basically going to be shooting water at your teeth. You don't want to do it just anywhere. You want to hover over the sink and then have the water fall into the sink. But, the good part here is, is you are going to be shooting bits of water, spurts of water at your teeth into the crevices. So, it almost acts like dental floss. And, you'll see bits of bacteria and really hard to reach substances and particles coming out of your mouth. Now, there are, it's important to keep in mind, because there are different speeds on this, one through five. Of course, that will signify how fast the water will shoot out of the Water Pik. If you put it up to the highest speed, five, and you've never done this before, chances are you will have bleeding gums. If you haven't used a Water Pik for a long time, too, your gums won't be as strong as they used to be. So, don't be alarmed. You don't want to blast your gums off the bat, though. If you do get a bit of bleeding, not to worry. But, just turn it down to either one or two and start off nice and slow. And then, as your mouth and your gums get a little bit more used to the Water Pik, you can increase the intensity. Water Piks are also fantastic, especially if you've ever had your wisdom teeth out or you need to have your wisdom teeth out, because, when your wisdom teeth are out, of course, you have holes in your mouth, which eventually do fill in. But, what happens? Bacteria and food fill up into those holes and brushing your teeth is not going to get it out, flossing is not going to get it out, of course rinsing with, say, mouthwash will help, but this is key. Of course, if you have had anything like your wisdom teeth removed, you want to put that on the lowest setting as well, especially near the beginning stages of that. But, try a Water Pik out, I'm sure you will be pleasantly surprised.

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