161–170 of 184 posts
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How long does one last? Do you use one for a week, month or just whenever you change your toothbrush?
About a month. The main thing is the plastic bumps on the wire wear away after a while.
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Again, there's the comparison of people who sell ice cream and see that when they sell more, there will be more drownings. Correlation does not imply causation. I think it is quite obvious that people who floss also brush their teeth more regularly, and that is enough to give them healthier smiles. (Regarding the benefits of flossing, I'm agnostic.)
It's true that correlation does not imply causation, but you're still wrong from my experience with hygienists and dentists. They definitely and easily see a difference seen between those who floss and brush and those who just brush. Also, those who use Sonicare, especially when used properly around the gumlines, also tend to have healthier mouths than those who brush with an old brush. The one thing that can throw a…
Personal antecedent is that I never flossed for 18 years, and would always walk out of the dentist with a bleeding gum somewhere in my mouth, and my teeth would hurt drinking cold water, etc, but when I finally started flossing all those problems evaporated. Some mouths probably need it more than others, and it appears that mine is one of them. Is flossing the best option for inter-teeth cleaning? Maybe not. However,…
You floss after brushing? I always thought the reverse was the best practice. Of course... there has been zero science, so maybe the best is brush -> floss -> brush -> Listerine -> floss.
A better discussion about the lack of evidence for flossing: https://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/may-the-floss-be-with-y... Basically, yes, flossing helps, but self-flossing really doesn't do anything more than just brushing daily. I'm a little disappointed at the number of comments here along the lines of, "Well, it's obvious! Why do we need to study it?" That's a very unscientific attitude.
Or, people who were assigned a professional flosser every single school day were also more likely to brush their teeth better and were reminded constantly about their teeth and even possibly taught stuff about teeth and so maybe even ate less sugary things. I don't have access to the paper: did they at least have the professional flosser supervise the self-flossing to control for this? Otherwise this just seems like…
I can't find a PDF of the original study, but in the review, they mention that one quadrant of the mouth was professionally flossed. This presumably lets them do within-subject comparisons: are there more/less cavities (or whatever) within the flossed portion?
This should remove confounds like 'ate more sugary things'. It's possible, of course, that kids brushed more on the flossed side (or the unflossed side), but you could presumably quantify that too.
A better discussion about the lack of evidence for flossing: https://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/may-the-floss-be-with-y... Basically, yes, flossing helps, but self-flossing really doesn't do anything more than just brushing daily. I'm a little disappointed at the number of comments here along the lines of, "Well, it's obvious! Why do we need to study it?" That's a very unscientific attitude.
Yet plenty of people seem to have fallen over each other to share that article (and this article). It seems anything that says you can have your cake and eat it too will have plenty of social media shares. In this case, it looks like flossing may be lightly studied, but is still good for us. Perhaps we can change that famous old adage to, "if it sounds too good to be true, it's probably clickbait".
Here's another piece of research on flossing, "In regression analyses, brushing thoroughness, flossing ability and frequency, and dental visit frequency were predictors of lower plaque, gingivitis, and calculus scores. In turn, these scores were predictors of shallower pocket depths and less attachment loss." [2]
That's on a study of 319 people, flossing regularity is based on surveys and dental health based on examinations.
[1] https://www.bulletproofexec.com/is-chocolate-good-for-you-he... [2] http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1752-7325.1995....
Isn't it about time we got rid of the ridiculous "if we haven't researched it, we know nothing about it" fallacy? Research is strong evidence that points towards something. Lack of research doesn't mean complete lack of a-priori knowledge . If something is obviously good for you, then that's probably a good start for recommending it.
A better discussion about the lack of evidence for flossing: https://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/may-the-floss-be-with-y... Basically, yes, flossing helps, but self-flossing really doesn't do anything more than just brushing daily. I'm a little disappointed at the number of comments here along the lines of, "Well, it's obvious! Why do we need to study it?" That's a very unscientific attitude.
Remember "chocolate is good for you"? Turns out that: "While research shows that cocoa can have a beneficial effect with regards to maintaining healthy vascular tone and insulin sensitivity, the reverse is true for sugar. Eating sweetened chocolate is still not good for you." [1] Yet plenty of people seem to have fallen over each other to share that article (and this article). It seems anything that says you can have…
As for the paper you cited, it seems (from what is publicly available) to conflict with the Cochrane review he cites. I can;t tell if the review looked at that particular paper or not.
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Dentists and dental hygienists look into tens of thousands of mouths over the courses of their careers. It's not difficult for them to see that patients who floss have far healthier smiles, in general. That said, they should get more studies done. You could also be a bad flosser, so even the study could be flawed.
Many chiropractors will also claim that they can directly observe the much lower incidence of cancer and heart disease in their patients, but that doesn't make it true.
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No. Gums (and possibly even tongue) are also part of your "smile". Could have said "mouth" but smile sounds better. On the note of tongues, using a tongue scraper is a great way to get rid of nasty bacteria that causes bad breath and spreads to the rest of the teeth/gums. Cheap and effective.
I hate to do this, but...source?
Gist is that tongue cleaning yields less bacteria (that's one major cause of bad breath), but they still recommend both brushing and tongue cleaning since the reduction of tongue bacteria didn't reduce plaque. I never claimed that it did though.
Tongue scrapers are cheap and awesome. It's amazing what kind of disgusting stuff you'll scrape off that thing. I'll nearly guarantee you better breath unless you have some serious other problems, like periodontitis.
A second source on elderly: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16677187
"These results suggest that tongue care is essential for preventing oral disease and needs to be part of any oral care programme in elderly people."