Originally published at: http://boingboing.net/2017/03/26/you-should-be-flossing-with-wa.html
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I’ll stick w/ ‘mint’ flavored floss !
There’s nothing more cleansing than running a rope through your teeth . . .
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I’d recommend a shower flosser instead. Cheaper, much less mess, and easier to remember to do as part of a daily shower. Plackers flossing sticks are also nice for on the go.
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Who the hell writes their ad copy? It’s always just awful! “You’re an unsanitary failure, and all of your things are broken. Nobody likes you - but they could, for 93% off!”
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So… its a WaterPik?
We had one of those in the 80s.
Got used a handful of time then just collected dust on the counter.
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I am the same way but with packs of floss.
Can’t stand flossing, but knew I needed to do something. Some people here suggested I try a water pick, and I got one for Christmas. Have used it nearly every day since. Now I need to goto the dentist after a month of Sundays to get a pro cleaning.
I would say, if I didn’t already have one, this would deal be tempting because it comes with gun cleaning tools.
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Using vodka as the liquid helps clean better
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I use a waterpik daily and I want to say that water is not a substitute for flossing.
Flossing is about scraping the biofilm off your teeth. Water can not do that. Water “flossers” are about rinsing away food particles which is good for oral health, because it reduces the amount of fuel for the bacteria that build up those biofilms. But that only slows the biofilm growth, it still grows.
I personally hate, hate, hate flossing because its so damn awkward. Then I discovered floss picks. They make flossing so much easier. They completely changed my attitude towards flossing. You can buy a bag of 60-90 picks for $1 at most dollar stores / big-lots type places. There are more expensive floss picks, but I prefer the cheapest ones because the floss is thinnest on the cheap ones so it gets between my teeth easier.
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actually, a good water flosser removes a much greater percentage of the plaque biofilm (99.5%) then string floss (40%-70%) which largely just pushes around the plaque biofilm and packs it into the gumline as much as it removes it. water flossers clean down to the enamel over most of the tooth surface including the gum pockets and in cavities that string floss can never even reach.
(it is like pressure washing your driveway as opposed to scraping it with a rope. it can get in all the little cracks, pits, and irregularities that exist on the enamel surface that a flat sting scrapes over top of.)
the plaque bio-film doesn’t provide fuel per se, it is a bio film. so it provides nutrient transport (not the nutrients themselves) and waste removal. bio-films allow bacteria and smaller organisms to live in colonies and are the structure they create to live in. the bacteria don’t eat it, it is more like housing/shelter/plumbing/sewage for them. a kombucha scoby is a biofilm, kombucha doesn’t eat it, it grows it for living in. the same is true for the plaque biofilm.
when i started water flossing i couldn’t believe how much cleaner it got my teeth. i was skeptical, most crap like this is just another thing that sits around unused, a marketing gimic, but water picks are not that…the results have been truly amazing. i can feel my teeth are cleaner for days after a single water flossing, whereas my teeth don’t really feel any cleaner at all after a string flossing.
Combining activated charcoal mineral toothpaste and water flossing has changed my mouth.
the water pick above looks like individual battery powered units which are very unlikely to have enough power (pump) or to hold enough water. (reservoir). i’d suggest going with a waterpik or hydropik which has a large water reservoir and the pump power to go through it all during your floss. pick a unit with a base and a tube to the wand and variable pressure settings.
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Mine goes up to level 10, but I can only stand 2 or 3 most of the time. I am trying to get build up so I can take more as times goes on.
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Wait. I thought flossing wasn’t proven to do much of anything.
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I have crooked teeth and it’s really hard to get floss into a couple of the spots. And where they’re more widely spaced, the floss tends to just push them around. The water flosser gets everything. Also, I still have 3 wisdom teeth, fully erupted. I can’t get back there with floss or a toothbrush very well, but I can get them with the water flosser!
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FYI, that study was funded by waterpik. The second author “Deborah Lyle” is a waterpik employee. Waterpik has commissioned a bunch of studies with results favorable to waterpik. That doesn’t mean the conclusions are wrong, but it does mean they are low on the trust scale.
My experience, using a waterpik every day, is that floss still removes biofilm, I can feel it on the floss after doing each tooth.
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I hate flossing, usually forget to do it. I had a water thing but same story. One day I bought one of these: https://www.amazon.com/Colgate-Floss-tip-Black-Toothbrush-Soft/dp/B00WVLS2VK thinking it was a gimmick but what the hell.
My next dentist trip, my dentist tried to figure out what I was doing differently, because my gums were in massively better shape than before. This toothbrush was the only thing I could think of. It has worked for me, I think because it’s just brushing my teeth anyway and they’re so crooked and crowded that flossing is a pain but a bristle or two might bend get in where I can’t get angle with floss.
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I use one of those ‘flossing-action’ tapered bristle toothbrushes, too. Love 'em. I still floss about once or twice a week but even when I do, the amount of gunk is much less than when I had been using a conventional, non-tapered bristle toothbrush. So yeah, not a gimmick. Not in my experience, anyway.
@redesigned: When I asked my dentist ‘Waterpik or string flossing’, he said either is better than nothing so he encourages his clients to use whichever they’re most comfortable with and thus inclined to use regularly.
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Flossy does.
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I’m here to gnaw chicory and write penny dreadfuls all about tiny packaged bathroom hydrology deferred, and I’ve only got seed chicory and growing zone 6.
I love w00+.com copy, but I’m zoooooming at 12:00AM and can’t slow down for it. Try this.
Need teensy pumps for each liqueur, soda and infusion, right in the bathroom, with a secret door to the office apothecary? Got your start right here!
Does it seem like your body doesn’t reabsorb water from mycelium and ice until noon lately? Would a set of bedroomy Taiko drums played by an arduino that knocks the calculus off your teeth at 7:20AM help with that? Well how about just yerba mate in intimate gum massage squirter thangs? All right then!
/cheats you all on pix of each Wiseguys character rendered with garnishes on my face, but with much better gum care, sorry.
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You are a beautiful mountain of intricately variegated dental gemstone, impressing future civilizations and bath remodelers. Epigenetics was making body rituals and vore fetishes all complicated until now.
Grateful!
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At first, I totally read the title of this post as ‘You Should Be Flossy,’ and I immediately thought to myself “I couldn’t even if I tried…”
And coincidentally here you are in a rare appearance.
Nice.
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