Time to toss the floss

From the PubMed link you provided.

AUTHORS' CONCLUSIONS:

There is some evidence from twelve studies that flossing in addition to toothbrushing reduces gingivitis compared to toothbrushing alone. There is weak, very unreliable evidence from 10 studies that flossing plus toothbrushing may be associated with a small reduction in plaque at 1 and 3 months. No studies reported the effectiveness of flossing plus toothbrushing for preventing dental caries."

That doesn't really support your case.

What about modern diets? Surely our ancestors didn't eat as much sugar as we do. Perhaps a better diet is more important than flossing?

Disclosure: I floss.

Maybe you didn't get to the end: the author tells us she replaced flossing with mouthwash + xylitol for a month, and by the end of it, her dentist said her teeth were perfect, unlike before. Not a third-party anecdote.

Exactly what I was thinking. Tooth decay's one thing, gum health is another, and wayyyy more important than teeth health (if we have to choose). Filling in cavities, applying new crowns, all relatively simple procedures these days. Replacing your gums? Yeah, that's probably going to require grafts from somewhere inside your mouth and will require seeing an oral surgeon if your dentist doesn't already do it. Overall, the experience won't be as..."simple" as a cavity filling.

Here's what the cochrane meta studies say:

(http://summaries.cochrane.org/CD008829/flossing-to-reduce-gu...)

> Twelve trials were included in this review which reported data on two outcomes (dental plaque and gum disease). Trials were of poor quality and conclusions must be viewed as unreliable. The review showed that people who brush and floss regularly have less gum bleeding compared to toothbrushing alone. There was weak, very unreliable evidence of a possible small reduction in plaque. There was no information on other measurements such as tooth decay because the trials were not long enough and detecting early stage decay between teeth is difficult.

(http://ohg.cochrane.org/cochrane-oral-health-group-scope)

Here is Dr Ellie's recommended cleaning method: http://www.drellie.com/pdfs/The-Kissing-System/Complete-Mout...

This is confirmed by my dental surgeon. (I had a minor graft to fix the receding gum above one of my canines.)

Plaque is something you need to remove with the toothbrush, by massaging the area where the gum wraps around the teeth.

On the other hand, my surgeon doesn't believe in mouthwash and says it's a waste of money.

And that's behind a paywall..

Does the above Ottawa Citizen article seems like a plagiarized version of what is there at the Times UK? Lots of similarities.

That's weird, it's a major Canadian newspaper.

Try http://www.readability.com/articles/ap1ukxbk

I can't find it on their site or Google News. Anyone happen to have another link?

It appears that they got caught plagiarizing another newspaper: http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/life/article3606527.ece

Unfortunately, the original article is behind a paywall.

Let me do some free advertising -- Jenkki professional chewing gum don't have any artificial sugars. They only have xylitol and some base.

You can only buy it in Finland, not even in Sweden (grumble).

Only problem is that xylitol gives you the shits.

My dental hygiene routine which has worked well for 20 years is brush my teeth twice a day, avoid dentists altogether (most of what they do is unnecessary) and soft drinks and stay the hell away from non natural and refined sugars. I can munch ice cubes quite happily.

When you search on xylitol, use "futile cycle" in the query --essentially, bacteria take xylitol up because it looks enough like a genuine, useful sugar, but can't do anything metabolically useful with it. It would be like humans spending all our energy chewing wood.

She has a pamphlet here with the procedure: http://issuu.com/zellies/docs/zellies-cmcsbooklet

And her website with more information here: http://www.drecoaching.com/