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Comment by david_l_lin | Hacker News Reader

cofounder at Bristle here. Unfortunately there is a lack of data around the efficacy of behavioral, lifestyle, and product interventions on oral health despite decades of dentists telling their patients to "brush and floss more". We decided we would share some of our findings with the community in an effort to shed some light on the importance of the oral microbiome in oral health.

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Useful and to-the-point information. Thanks for sharing.

Are you aware of Dr. Ellie Philipps? She wrote several books. She’s big on microbiome, brushing at the gum line and xylitol, among other things. Did you ever talk to her? I think she’d love contact yo researchers like you. She also has quite a following from her books, I believe.

Hi there David, as someone who isn't great at flossing but is interested in finding a more palatable approach (pun intended). Is there much research on the difference of using a good water flosser vs string? Or is it more so that any form of flossing is significantly better than none.

Hi! That's a great question that we've heard more than once. We're compiling the data, and so far we simply don't have enough data around water flossing vs string to draw any conclusions. In general, it definitely appears that any flossing is better than none with a caveat:

There are flossing "responders" and "non-responders" that we are looking into and hopefully we'll have another post to share soon. It appears that the oral microbiome may be able to predict whether flossing (or perhaps water flossing) actually improves your health because for some it does not have as much of an effect as others.

Flossing is hard to get started, but when you learn how to do it, your fingers become quick and experience, you can floss completely in 2 minutes, while thinking about something else.

Rinse with some water in your mouth before flossing to get any chunks out, then rinse again after flossing to get the chunks out that were dislodged during flossing.

Don't bother with water flosser etc, you won't need it if you do as i suggested you can remove 100% of particle matter without another gadget, charger and expense etc

Also just floss using the normal string dont bother with picks, floss holders etc, its so much easier to use string when you get experienced with it. Do it! It's worth it!

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