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0 pointsHelloMcFly9y ago0 comments

Honestly, I only need myself as evidence to the personal benefit; I have nothing to say about the generalizability of my results.

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.

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jerf9y ago

I've had a somewhat similar experience, but with a slight tweak. I now actually carry around a container of floss with me in my standard pocket loadout. But I don't floss everyday. I floss when I eat something that tends to get stuck in my teeth, beef jerkey being the worst offender, or when I notice I've got a bit of local inflammation in my gums, which has always turned out to be some piece of food stuck in there.

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.

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