Tell your dentist to suck it: there’s little evidence flossing works | Hacker News Reader

Tell your dentist to suck it: there’s little evidence flossing works

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13 pointsuser_00113 comments

"Anon, I suggest you start flossing more regularly to clean debris in-between your teeth"

"No thanks Mr. Dentist, an article I read on the internet said that is dumb :-)"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YWdD206eSv0

I floss a few times a week and the smell can be just awful, like rotting meat was stuck in there. So I will continue flossing, brushing my teeth, and rinsing with mouthwash, despite the evidence. After 10 years of this and finally going to the dentist... although there was some plaque buildup and some gum inflammation, as the dentist claimed that these were harder things to remove over time and required dental tools, she did let me know that I had no cavities.

While exciting news, with an interesting, counter-intuitive finding, that is a horrible (though accurate) title and worse article.

Here is the original story: http://bigstory.ap.org/article/f7e66079d9ba4b4985d7af350619a...

and HN posting: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12210772

Even earlier HN posting of the same article: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12208402

Be that as it may, I can smell somebody who doesn't floss from 10 feet away. You should floss if not for yourself, then at least for the rest of us.

Personally I floss daily as well as Waterpik on most days, but don't you think that may just be a confirmation bias?

Bullshit. Some people have halitosis, some people just don't brush regularly. There is one of my coworkers who occasionally has really bad breath, but it's not clear that he just missed a flossing.

Source: I have a hygiene pact with a coworker. (If either of us ever smells or has a bad appearance, we're pact-bound to tell the other.) I floss twice a year: 48 hours before my dentist appointments, the times I've had bad breath have not been flossing related.

> I have a hygiene pact with a coworker.

Huh, that's a cool idea :) Is that common (under another moniker maybe)? I can't find anything on Google. Just proposing such a pact can probably be tricky, but I've been thinking about something similar recently.

> I've been thinking about something similar recently.

"Hey, dude, do you want to have a personal hygiene pact? Ok, great, because I have something to tell you..."

We were fast friends and one of us was bold to make fun of the spilled food on the other's shirt, and it led to "oh man I'm glad you told me before I walked into that meeting" which led to "oh yeah let's always do this."

Look up origin of halitosis. It's just a name for bad breath made up by Listerine, not actual illness.

Sure, there's more than one cause of breath odor, and one of those is perio, the prognosis of which is improved by regular flossing (and other oral therapies). Morning breath doesn't reek the same way perio breath does, and it's a world of smells and other issues that are hard to forget.

The truth of the research is that flossing doesn't significantly contribute to oral health when done alongside adequate manual brushing- diet, hygiene habits, and personal chemistry accounted for. That's not new info; clean is clean.

However, most people don't brush adequately or frequently enough and aren't using good electric brushes, so flossing does help them.

And it sounds like you've been really lucky so far, but don't rely on odor as an indicator of your health. By the time you can smell a lot of things, they've been problems for a while.

> I floss twice a year

Dude, I can smell your breath all the way here in Texas.

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