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How do I floss my teeth? Let me count the ways (with apologies to Elizabeth Barrett Browning). The answer seems to be in infinite ways, something like love, but it should be done at least once, and preferably twice, every day (something like love?). How many flavours does floss come in? Almost as difficult a question to answer. Here’s a little tally of what I’ve been able to dig up: There are…

USE YOUR IMAGINATION. CHANGE THE WORLD. Warnings: 1.Today’s post about artificial muscle created from nylon floss may get a bit technical. 2. I haven’t actually tried any of this, although the researchers claim you can do this at home. Please bear with me, though. This could change your life. Recently there was a flurry of excitement (for some) about a new technique for making artificial muscle…

The Scream, by Edvard Munch Odontolinonophobia- Fear of dental floss (This term is newly minted. You won’t find it in any dictionary or psychiatric textbook.) No, not the title of a book à la Erica Jong. Let’s face it. Floss scares some people, but not as much as it does RJ Moody, who fears that he’ll decapitate himself while applying its fearsome threads to his mouth. He even wrote a poem about…

Art by Jackie Rae Wloski Warning: this is a rant. I was at a dental convention today, here in Montreal, where I hang out. The commercial exhibits were busy selling everything dental under the sun, including lasers, digital radiography, fancy equipment, and, of course, the staples: toothbrushes and toothpaste. I walked up to the two booths that sell these last items, well-known brands both…

So after all that religion in #25, let’s lighten up a bit with this simple and entertaining video by Euan Dobson, showing us how he strings a classical guitar with dental floss. Listen to how beautiful it sounds. Cool! <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HO08T4ukuac&gt;

My daughter Rebecca found this article about tiny plastic beads in certain varieties of Crest toothpaste, apparently put there by the manufacturer to give the toothpaste its blue colour. As some of us may know, there is great controversy in the inclusion of plastic beads as an abrasive in some “invigorating” body wash soaps, supposedly as a scrub enhancement or exfoliating agent. They wash down…

Did you ever wonder how to get that really loose tooth out of you child’s mouth without going to the dentist or letting nature take its course? We’ve all heard of the homemade way of pulling out a loose baby tooth by putting a loop of floss around it and attaching the other end to a door knob, and…slam! Ouch! Some parents are much more creative than that. One parent attached the far end to a golf…

1001 Uses For Dental Floss #64- Tusca Loosa

Just as a caveat emptor, the following story took place outside Tuscaloosa, AL, and it’s about a loose tooth. Since a tusk is basically an elephant’s tooth grown extra large, should you be skeptical here: (tusca-loosa, ha!ha!)? There are photos taken from a helicopter of the ensuing mess, seen above, but still, I get that nagging feeling, somehow, like my leg is being pulled. In this case it…

1001 Uses For Dental Floss #63- Mouth Bacteria Linked to Colon Cancer

image from United States Department of Health and Human Services,

Fusobacterium nucleatum, a bacterium found in the mouth, and specifically in dental plaque, has been shown to also be accelerate the growth of cancer cells in the colon and rectum (your lower gut), where they are also found.

In the mouth, dental plaque is found on the surfaces of the teeth if they aren’t kept properly clean by…

1001 Uses For Dental Floss # 62- A Woman Scribe Got The Blues

  A Woman Scribe Got The Blues

You may recall the name–Dr. Christina Warinner, who is an anthropologist, last mentioned in these pages (1001 Uses #4) because, discovered that ancient humans used one sort of grass to floss their teeth. Well, here she is again, this time with colleague Anna Radini of the University of York in England, still studying dental calculus, AKA tartar, but on the teeth of…

Fluoride Toothpaste and Young Children

We’re back after a hiatus of a couple of years. Us smiling up at the top? No, that’s a mild form of dental fluorosis.

  A recent report from the Centre for Disease Control and Prevention on the use of toothpaste and tooth-brushing patterns among children and adolescents (https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/68/wr/mm6804a3.htm)suggests that young children are using and swallowing too much fluoridated…

1001 Uses For Dental Floss #60- Neanderthal Kisses and Dental Plaque

  Helene Rougier, anthropologist at California State University Northridge, in the United States, displays some of the 96 bones and three teeth from five Neanderthal individuals which were found in the Belgium Goyet cave. Credit: Emmanuel Dunand Getty Images Neanderthals were amazing creatures. Much like us, and much not like us at all. And yet, archeologists have recently looked at hardened…

1001 Uses For Dental Floss #59- Fashion Toothpastes

A little late for the end-of-year holidays, but I can’t always be up-to-date on everything dental. Now toothpaste has joined so many other products as worthy of a fashion article. In Vogue Magazine, an article of 8 toothpaste products deemed worthy of being considered as gifts (and why not throw in some floss) was in the December 20 issue, just in time for those last-minute head-scratchers trying…

1001 UsesFor Dental Floss #58- Sugar Really Is Bad For You, In So Many Ways

I recently came across this article in Medscape, a well-respected medical journal which is easy to access online. The contents of the article should make you worry. If you think about the processed and commercially-available restaurant food you may occasionally (or often) eat or take your kids to, you should be aware that sugar is an ingredient in very many of these foods, sometimes even…

1001 Uses For dental Floss #57- The dental nurse who became an alligator catcher- a story with teeth.

  Image copyright by Christy Kroboth, 2017. Not exactly dental floss-related, but a fun story anyway. I came across this story of a dental assistant who decided to give up her career to become a full-time alligator catcher. Alligators of course have a lot more teeth than your (or my) average dental patient, and they’re a lot sharper and dangerous, so there’s part of the challenge. When Christy…

1001 Uses For Dental Floss #56- Is Flossing Really Useless?

Globe and Mail columnist Margaret Wente recently wrote an article following up on the Associated Press’s dismissal of flossing as a useful adjunct to oral health, expressing, I guess, relief that finally she could ignore the advice she receives every time she goes to her dentist’s office. She seems to hate doing the flossing, and resents having an “expert” tell her what to do. Her article in the…

1001 Uses For Dental Floss #55- The Story of Gulliver’s Floss

So, it seems that the Associated Press did a deep review of scientific papers studying flossing and found that, amazingly, FLOSSING IS USELESS! Sure, and Dewey won the presidency against Truman in the 1948 U.S, Presidential Election- they got that one right too. No one could be more surprised than me at this revelation, but sceptic that I am, I don’t believe it. In my heart (and experience) I…