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I am not 100% convinced yet, but I think flossing teeth can cause more damage than good.

While every dental heath professional will tell you to floss, if you think about it, there are problems.

Getting rid of remaining food and bacterial accumulations forming on sugary residues on your teeth is a good thing. However, driving it around with a piece of string can just as easily shove it deeper under the gum and make matters worse.

If you have an infected area, using the same piece of floss is almost guaranteed to spread the infection everywhere it touches.

I am unable to floss with my fingers (arthritis and damage from too much typing). For a while I used little plastic flossers, but it was awkward and I hated throwing away so much plastic.

At some point I stumbled onto waterpick, and it seemed like a much better idea. A pulsing waterjet knocks out all food particles, and pressure-washes teeth and gumlines. It is likely to rinse stuff out instead of pushing it in. I am always amazed, after brushing my teeth well, how much junk gets washed out! And so I brush and waterpick at least a couple of times a day.

I think flossing will be one of those things we will laugh about in 50 years, the way we laugh at '9 out of 10 doctors recommend Camel cigarettes' commercials today. It seems like a stupid, barbaric practice. Perhaps scraping the crap out of your teeth twice a year by a hygienist only to watch them grow calculus immediately is another such practice.

I haven't been able to find any hard data or studies. Obviously flossing implies that you are taking pretty good care of your teeth generally, and those who don't floss are lokely to not... I am not aware of any studies of flossing vs waterpicking, combined with brushing...

since early childhood i was not able to tolerate if something was stuck in between my teeth. in ussr there were only toothbrushes, no flossing, that was too cool of a technology. we haven't even heard of flossing. or about tooth braces.

so back to my story, i was refusing to eat many things because peaces would stuck in my mouth and i wouldn't be able to remove them.

that was very frustrating to my relatives and parents. it wasn't every day they would be able to afford let's say chicken. maybe oncemoc twice a month, but i would not be happy to eat it.

so since i discovered flossing, in late 2000s it reached us, i was very happy, and i always carry one with me.

that was about my feelings, not how healthy it is.

now on health: i don't know why, but if i damage the gums or the cheek even accidentally while eating or cleaning, it is almost certain that i will have infection and i will suffer from it for a week.

so again i was avoiding the food that wouldn't be easily cleaned by just brush.

if i got the infection, i could buy antibiotic salve in apotheke (it is allowed here and was suggested to me buy the drugstore worker) and it would half my suffering. but i didn't want to use antibiotics.

one day accidentally i found a solution. i damaged the gums and got the infection and suffering started. i drunk kefir and it went awayvery fast.

so next time i damaged something in my mouth i would drink kefir. and suddenly it happened that i discovered the salvation. apparently microorganisms in kefir have very good antiseptic properties.

so today if i know if i ate chicken or even kimchi and i will have to floss, since i won't be able to live with something in my teeth, and the probability of getting an infection by damaging gums or cheek while flossing is very high in my case, i know i hovu to make sure i have kefir in the refrigerator. i will drink kefir immediately after cleaning teeth and nothing bad will happen.

@norayr -- yes, great for getting junk out. I used to make toothpicks out of matches in the old country.

The important thing is to keep your teeth clean, including the parts unreachable by brushing: all the gaps between teeth and under the gums. You can achieve this is various ways, like with a waterpick — each method has their own pros and cons — but I believe flossing is the best overall compromise given factors like cost, availability, effectiveness, and technical difficulty.

One of the downsides of flossing certainly is that if you floss with too much force or fine motor control, the gums may get at least irritated. Given the right technique, the amount of damage is well within a healthy mouth's ability to recover from, so it comes out as a net positive.

Source: my father was a dentist (now retired), and common sense. 🙂

I hope dental floss stays in production because its a great tool for removing stuck rings. I try floss before cutting them off with a silicon carbide grinding disk.

The whole bit about spreading stuff around is why I use a fresh section of floss for each tooth. I use a length from the palm of my outstretched hand to the opposite shoulder.

Even if this is a fluke, my dental health has improved tremendously since I started flossing daily. I had an abcess every year from like 24-27, then I started taking flossing seriously and now I don't have the same problem.

Re: passing the infection around: the correct order is floss, then mouthwash, then brush (and ideally you don't rinse the toothpaste off)

Flossing Teeth Considered Harmful?

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