It was the same with flossing. When I started flossing I didn't say anything, and she hasn't commented that I need to floss since.
Flossing is an obvious way to disrupt pathogenic bacterial colonies by abrasion. I think irrigation is much better, as it reaches deep pockets below gums. But it doesn't replace flossing entirely.
Those two, coupled with regular brushing of teeth, gum and tongue, plus oral probiotics should keep issues at bay.
In particular, my experience with probiotics is that tartar calculus fell apart within a few months. I have never had a cavity.
Sadly most dentists don't place too much emphasis on these as it goes against their business model: drill, fill and bill.
Here's some research that claims flossing actually causes problems.
"Dental flossing can produce bacteraemia in periodontally healthy and periodontally diseased individuals at a rate comparable with that caused by some dental treatments for which antibiotic prophylaxis is given to prevent IE." http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1600-051X.2008....
But in general, interdental flossing is very good against contact cavities [1]. Perhaps deep flossing is leading to bacteraemia. I have always found hard and awkward to perform deep flossing, and that's why I use oral irrigators instead. However, maybe irrigation also leads to bacteraemia. I've seen some references supporting that too.
If your mouth has an unhealthy microbiome, you might need to place a lot of emphasis on killing bad bacteria initially. For this purpose, salt water or mild antibiotics (chlorhexidine) for 2 weeks combined with double dose of probiotics should do the trick.
Obviously, sugars feed bad bacteria, which metabolize it into acids to erode your enamel. Avoid entirely.
So i'm kind of skeptical of the effect.
Edit - I always wonder what kind of toothbrush other people use. I've always used electric ones so I wonder if that helps.
Like you, I have good teeth (never had a filling) and on average have visited the dentist about once every 10 years.
Like you I also used to never be able to get floss in between my teeth, but after a dental checkup some years back the dentist cleared all the plaque buildup and from then on getting the floss between my teeth was no problem, and I've been flossing regularly since.
Once the plaque builds up and hardens, it's very difficult to break it up with just floss and you'll have difficulty getting floss in.
For what it's worth, my teeth definitely feel cleaner after flossing, and if I miss a couple of days they start to feel dirty.
But now I have discovered floss tape; it's just what it sounds like, a thin strip of tape that you can slide between your teeth to floss. Now I can actually floss and it makes a big difference to how clean my teeth look and feel. I'm in the UK and the product I use is Oral-B Satin Tape - worth trying or finding an equivalent if you have teeth very close together.
I floss daily and sometimes twice a day. I keep floss at my desk at work and some mouthwash to kill some of germs that get stirred up. It is easy to fit that in when thinking through a problem.
I also take vitamin C twice a day. My dentists always comment on the good health of my gums and say "you take vitamin c don't you?" At 62 I want to maintain my gum and teeth health.
Amazing that people are wondering what the "scientific" value in getting food particles out of your mouth.
A few people are certainly "gifted" teeth-wise (I know another case), but not going to the dentist for 25 years would be disastrous if applied on large scale.
Well that's the problem, we don't have better evidence.
We actually have had it for quite a while. The CAMBRA MOOC is put together by a dentist/statistician and lays out a point system based on correlation between patient behaviors/health and carries. It has been iteratively corrected based on effective and ineffective results when modifying behavior according to the system.
Notably in that system, floss is not given a point. Whatever effect it may have is either too weak or better described by other factors flossing correlates with.
When points like that come up, the teacher stresses that the system is only measuring odds of near term carries, so flossing may be effective for something else with regards to oral health or preventing one of the negative factors.
Focusing on flossing itself, as person who started doing it regularly only as adult, I think that researching on how frequently one should floss (or not) is in a way like researching how frequently one should change underwear. It may make sense theoretically, but ultimately all it requires is just to pay attention.
I never noticed the bleeding and/or irritation of the gums (which dentists always mention) until I started flossing regularly.
Now I do feel a difference (as a matter of fact, I floss irregularly, depending on how the gums feel). Of course, I'm pretty sure I could survive without flossing at all.
This is in line with what dentists generally suggest. Given that flossing can be ultimately considered as simply extra cleaning, and that the presence (or not) of the effects can be easily observed, a couple of weeks of flossing should be enough for anybody to make a solid judgment more than any theory.
I did well, for a while, too. Then I had a lot of chemo. First year post, I had 14 cavities requiring fillings. Now I have 3 crowns.
Floss your teeth, preferably with a water pick. Older you will thank younger you.
Same here. Never understood how people can physically floss. Maybe those with undeveloped teeth can do it, others, I don't see how it's even possible.
For some teeth, I have to force it a little, my teeth are pretty close too. Its so worth it though: much better breath, clean feel, minimized risk of cavities.
Having a loop allows to have a firm hold on the floss and adjust tension. I use it with both hands though. And I waste very little floss because I can rotate the loop and use every inch of it.
Of course people's teeth are different. I know some prefer these, where you push it in from the side. http://www.tepe.com/uk/products/interdental-brushes/
I brushed mostly regularly the second half of this period, I never flossed. I'm a computer geek, I can get caught up in code for days without brushing my teeth but try to do it regularly.
The result was 13 years of plaque and two visits to a dentist to clean it all out.
Dental plaque is a coating over your tooth and your gums will grow over this coating. So I think it's pretty obvious that dental plaque can cause cavities between your gums and your teeth, infections in your gums and all this will in turn lead to periodontitis.
And also you have saliva glands at the bottom of your mouth that bring with them additional minerals and stuff that get stuck to your teeth, forming plaque. So the front bottom teeth are even more important to floss.
Now I floss regularly and I'm proud to have actually made it one of my daily habits.
I'm terrified to ask what you did the first half of that period.
"Since doctors began saying that a string-based tooth scrapping was good for oral health, a handful of studies have been conducted. However, they all fall far short of what’s needed to make a convincing argument. A 2011 review of a dozen randomized controlled studies concluded that, “Overall there is weak, very unreliable evidence which suggests that flossing plus toothbrushing may be associated with a small reduction in plaque at 1 or 3 months.”
The US Agriculture and Health and Human Services departments quietly removed the flossing recommendation from the latest version of dietary guidelines.
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If anyone thinks that this is because the study's parameters are too narrow to show an effect, that is not the case. Other studies have successfully shown the benefits of flossing... if the dentist is the one performing it. But they haven't been able to show similar results when regular people do the flossing.
"Maybe the evidence that flossing reduces tooth decay or gum disease does not hold up because we are all such poor flossers. Superflossers, like the zealous hygienist at your dentist’s office, aim to “hug the neck of the tooth” and get below the gum line, Dr. Hujoel said.
But we common folk, staring woefully at our bathroom mirrors, tend to lightly give it the once-over.
A review of six trials found that when professionals flossed the teeth of children on school days for almost two years, they saw a 40 percent reduction in the risk of cavities.
So maybe perfect flossing is effective. But scientists would be hard put to find anyone to test that theory."
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Honestly, I'm not surprised at all. Years ago, my dentist strongly urged me to get my asymptomatic wisdom teeth removed. I then went home and did my own research on this subject. And what I found was the complete opposite of my dentist's recommendation.
But a new study of more than 6,000 patients in Greece found that only 2.7 percent of the teeth had a cyst or tumor. An older study, often cited by critics of routine extraction, found that only 12 percent of 1,756 middle-aged people who had not had impacted wisdom teeth removed experienced a complication.
Numerous comprehensive reviews of research, conducted by independent bodies not affiliated with oral surgeons, have concluded that there was no evidence to support routine prophylactic extraction of impacted but healthy wisdom teeth.
Britain’s National Health Service stopped paying for the procedure if there was no good reason for it after an analysis by its Center for Reviews and Dissemination at the University of York concluded in 1998 that there was no solid scientific evidence to support it. Also that year, the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh said that for patients who do not have a condition related to third molars or whose teeth would probably grow in successfully, removal is “not advisable.”
In 2005, a review by the respected Cochrane Collaboration said the number of extractions could be reduced by 60 percent if they were done only when patients were in pain or developed a condition related to wisdom teeth. The group also said there is “reliable evidence” that suggests that removing wisdom teeth does not prevent or reduce crowding of front teeth.
In 2008, the American Public Health Association dismissed arguments typically made for removing wisdom teeth: that adjacent teeth might be damaged, or that the teeth may harbor bacteria that cause periodontal disease. The association approved a policy saying these concerns do not justify the risks of surgery, which include possible nerve damage, complications from anesthesia. loss of the sense of taste and, very rarely, death.
“The few studies of long-term retention of impacted teeth have shown little risk of harm,” the association concluded.
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I've since brought this up with a few other friends who are dentists as well. They always start off by haranguing me for doing my own research, instead of following my dentist's recommendation. Then once I show them all the above evidence, which they have never seen before, they change their minds and accept that I'm probably right.
With a track record like that, I wouldn't be surprised at all if flossing turns out to be yet another sacred cow that's virtually pointless in reality.
I do have to say kudos to the dental field though. At least they are making efforts to validate their recommendations, using empirical studies. I wonder how many of the recommendations given by programmers/teachers/fitness-trainers etc are similarly flawed.
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/03/health/flossing-teeth-cavi...
I've always had bad, painful dentist visits until my mid-20s. They were quite bloody. Since I started flossing, my dental visits are not painful, and my gums never bleed. When they do the gum measurements, I now get 2s and 3s instead of 4s and 5s.
The only change I made was flossing. I don't argue that it reduces plaque or has all of these life-changing benefits, but it stops my gums from bleeding and makes dentist trips a breeze. That's enough for me. Maybe others won't get the same benefit.
Given how bad inflammation has proved to be lately (be it because the inflammation itself is bad or because what is causing it is bad doesn't matter much to me if it's bad either way), it's at least plausible that flossing may have an effect on gum disease, but also plausible that it's an entirely situational thing. A habit may be better than never doing it, but you may just need to do it when the situation calls for it.
Ultimately I carry the floss around because regardless of whether it has long term benefits provable by science, it definitely can have short-term benefits of having less inflamed and at times slightly-painful gums because it's trying to use the immune system to remove a chunk of food better physically removed.
Sheesh, shouldn't they ideally never-bleed? Just what is it you're ingesting (or not ingesting)?