Flossing your teeth can be a waste of time-and do more HARM than good, leading dental expert claims

Daily Mail (U.K.) ^ | 10/15/2015 | Jane Symons

[simpson96]

We're constantly told we should be flossing our teeth - despite it being fiddly, time-consuming and sometimes painful.

Figures show that less than a fifth of us actually bother to do it regularly - with many tacky rolls of floss gathering dust in bathrooms the world over.

Now, one leading expert has warned that if not performed correctly, flossing can actually do more harm than good.

Here, Robin Seymour, Emeritus Professor of Dental Sciences at Newcastle University and leading periodontologist, explains why - and suggests other, easier ways to get perfect pearly-whites...Facebook

[MayflowerMadam]

“I think they should have their own schools!”

They do. ;-)

[Roos_Girl]

Ping

[steve86]

100% agree on the importance of heredity to development of dental caries and also chronic halitosis.

Some people fool themselves into thinking the absence of those is due to their own good habits

[steve86]

“I’ve been flossing 4-6 times a week since I was a teenager. I’ve had a grand total of 1 cavity my entire life.”

Your testimonial seems to be the perfect case study of the importance of heredity. You’ve only had one cary — why not a bunch before you started flossing? I probably had 20 before I was 13. Now my teeth crack one or two a year regardless of whether I floss (of course).

[steve86]

Has he/she retrieved dental records of your ancestors to rule out good heredity as the reason?

[Georgia Girl 2]

WEll I do have incredibly good teeth. thick enamel but My Mom had such bad periodontal disease she had all her teeth pulled at age 32 or something. Has had dentures ever since. I doubt if she ever flossed. I don’t think they did that when she was young.

[steve86]

“My Mom had such bad periodontal disease she had all her teeth pulled at age 32 or something.”

My mom had a lot extracted also — I think they must have been over-eager to do that back then. Or maybe surgical periodontal treatments and root canals/capping were not as broadly used yet.

[Georgia Girl 2]

My Mom said it was so expensive she and my Dad could not afford it. At that time getting dentures was real common.

[uncitizen]

Lol

[Swordmaker]

Hi, Roos_Girl . . . I find this amusing. Some of the worst teeth in the world we've seen in the office have been in people from Great Britain. However, this Emeritus Professor is right that if someone is flossing wrong, they can do more damage than no flossing at all. If one were to floss downward from the top of the teeth toward the gums, instead of upward, they will be packing food particles and scraped off plaque where it should not be, into the gum line where it can rot, creating the problem flossing is intended to prevent in the first place. The headline, which was probably not written by the Professor, was designed to grab readers and clicks. Unfortunately, most people won't get much farther into the article than the head line.

Our office's protocol is still the same. Brush with baking soda and every week rinse and swish around the teeth with Dakin's Solution (a 1 to 20 Clorox Germicidal to water solution) to kill whatever bacteria survive the baking soda. Use a power type irrigator to get the solution down into the gum line. Floss. . . properly. Done.