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Why Does Food Keep Getting Stuck Between the Same Two Teeth?
By the Celestial Dental Centre clinical team · Published
You know the spot. Nyama choma, a bit of sukuma, and afterwards there is that same pressure between the same two teeth, and you cannot think about anything else until it is out.
Most people treat this as a quirk of their mouth. It usually is not. Teeth that sit properly against each other do not catch food at every meal. When one place does, something about that contact has changed.
Why does food get stuck in one place and nowhere else?
Healthy neighbouring teeth touch at a small, firm point. Floss snaps through it with a little resistance and food slides off it instead of being forced down into the gum.
When that contact is lost or damaged, every bite becomes a wedge. The usual reasons are fairly few.
The contact has opened. Teeth drift over the years, especially after a tooth nearby has been removed and not replaced. A gap of less than a millimetre is enough to trap a fibre of meat.
A filling or crown was shaped without a good contact, or has worn down since. The tooth looks fine from the front, but between the teeth there is a ledge or a space.
There is a cavity at the contact. Decay between teeth is invisible in a mirror, and one of its earliest signs is a spot that suddenly starts catching food or shredding floss.
The gum has receded. As gum shrinks back, the little triangle of gum between teeth flattens and leaves a dark space that collects food.
The tooth opposite is pushing it in. A pointed cusp on the tooth above or below can act like a plunger, driving food into the space every time you bite.
Why does it hurt until I get it out?
Because the food is pressing on gum, not on tooth.
The gum between two teeth is soft and well supplied with nerves. Food packed into it pushes it down and keeps pushing. That gives the dull, nagging pressure that disappears the moment the piece comes out.
If you leave it, the gum gets inflamed and tender, and over a day or two it can start to throb. Repeat that at every meal for months and the bone around those teeth starts to suffer. A single food trap is one of the classic places for localised gum disease to start in an otherwise healthy mouth.
My floss keeps shredding in that gap. Does that mean anything?
Yes. Floss should come out whole.
If it frays, catches or snaps in one spot every time, there is usually a rough edge there. That could be the margin of an old filling, a chipped edge, a lump of hard tartar, or the edge of a cavity. None of those will be fixed by better flossing, and all of them are worth having looked at.
Is it okay to use a toothpick?
Used gently, to lift food out of a gap you can see, it does little harm.
The problem is the way most of us use them. A wooden toothpick jabbed hard and often into the same space pushes the gum back further, which makes the space bigger, which traps more food. It is a loop that slowly makes the problem worse.
A better tool is an interdental brush that fits the gap snugly, or floss if the contact is still tight. Which one suits your teeth is covered at celestialdental.org/flossing-tight-teeth-floss-interdental-brush-or-water-flosser.
What will a dentist actually do about it?
First, find out which of those reasons it is.
That usually means looking at the contact with floss, checking the bite, and taking a small X-ray of that side. Decay between teeth shows up on X-rays long before it can be seen, so the X-ray matters more than the look.
The fix depends on what is found.
A cavity at the contact gets filled, and the new filling is shaped to touch the neighbouring tooth properly again. What happens if that cavity has gone deeper is explained at celestialdental.org/cavity-treatment-filling-root-canal-or-extraction.
An old filling with a poor contact or overhanging ledge can often be replaced or reshaped.
A cusp that plunges food can sometimes be smoothed slightly, which is a small adjustment.
A space left by drifting teeth is harder. Sometimes it can be closed with a filling. Sometimes the honest answer is that only moving the teeth will close it, and that is a bigger conversation.
Gum recession cannot always be reversed. In that case the aim is managing the space well, usually with a properly sized interdental brush every day.
I would rather be honest about that range. Some food traps are a twenty-minute repair. Some are something you learn to look after.
When should I come in?
Sooner rather than later if the spot is new, if it has started to hurt even when there is no food in it, if your floss shreds there, if the gum bleeds or looks swollen, or if you notice a bad taste from that side.
A spot that has trapped food for years without change still deserves a look at your next check-up. Mention it. It is exactly the sort of thing that is easy to miss from the outside and obvious once you know where to look.
Book an appointment
Call +254 709 000 240 or +254 707 535 000, or book online at celestialdental.org. We have branches in Kasarani (Nairobi), Kamakis (Ruiru), Eldoret and Kiambu Road (Thindigua). Kasarani, Kamakis and Eldoret are open every day from 07:00 to 20:00, and Kiambu Road every day from 08:00 to 18:00.
Tell the front desk which side it is. It helps to know where to start.