For a while, you may be able to trick your dentist into thinking you've been flossing when you haven't been, but she will eventually be able to tell.
The more important question is, why aren't you flossing?
If you have not been flossing as consistently as you ought to be lately, your dentist and dental hygienist might not notice straight away. Especially if you start flossing again about a week before your appointment, you may be able to fool your dentist because it take around a week of regular flossing for the gums to stop bleeding when they’re cleaned.
If you are young and healthy, and eat a healthy diet (which has an impact on your oral health), you can also decrease the outward signs of not flossing that a dentist or hygienist would detect.
However, you wouldn’t be able to fool them forever.
Think of it this way: it’s very much like what would happen if you stopped consistently exercising and eating a healthy diet. At first, the the negative impact of your new unhealthy lifestyle may not be obvious. You would continue to look, and even feel, more or less the same as before for a few weeks or even months, if you’re lucky.
But these lifestyle changes would catch up with you eventually, just like not flossing.
At the end of the day, prevention is the foundation of good oral health – not treatment. Making good oral hygiene a part of your daily routine will prevent problems from developing in the first place. If you don’t allow the problem develop in the first place, then you’ll never have to deal with it.
What will happen?
Infrequent flossing allows the bacteria already present in the mouth to increase in numbers and colonize.
In short, eventually tooth decay and gum disease will begin to develop in your mouth. Your dentist will then certainly be able to tell your oral hygiene routine is lacking!
In the end, we’ll leave you with these questions: What's the point of trying to fool your dentist into thinking you’re flossing regularly when you’re not? Why don't you just... floss? It only takes a couple of minutes for crying out loud!