The lack of evidence for flossing astounds me.

I know that when I don’t floss, my gums will bleed sometimes during brushing and/or they’ll get inflamed. When I do floss regularly, absolutely no issue with bleeding or inflammation.

It’s so clear to me that I can’t imagine what the difference is between my anecdata and whatever actual data is coming from these studies.

>When I do floss regularly, absolutely no issue with bleeding or inflammation.

Do they bleed during flossing though? I used to get bleeding gums after brushing teeth, but switching to a softer toothbrush stopped it. Flossing, at the start, does cause my gums to bleed though.

For me, flossing causes bleeding during the first week. Afterwards, the bleeding stop and my sensitivity to temperature improves greatly. My halitosis goes away on most days, too.

My dental hygienist knows when I have been flossing and when I haven't.

Only during the first 2-4 times (and lessening each day) after having not flossed for a while.

After that, I never bleed during flossing. And I make sure to get it up between the gum and each tooth, so there’s a decent (but appropriate) amount of floss/gum friction.

Yeah, that went away pretty quickly when I started flossing regularly really for the first time, a year or two ago (my dentist having strongly advised that I need to). I do feel like it has made a positive difference, but I have also cut back very significantly on sugary drinks over roughly the same period, having improved my diet a lot, so maybe that made more of a difference...

Flossing or brushing only causes bleeding for me when my gums aren't healthy. For example after getting a proper cleaning my gums won't bleed for weeks or months.

If they start bleeding again it's a sign I've not been doing a good job staying on top of keeping them healthy.

In my observation, flossing does work . The toothbrush can't get to the crevices that a floss can. My gum bleeding only happens when I'm flossing too rough or when I'm starting to floss after a few days of skipping it.

One of the issues in the now infamous meta analysis was that many of the studies analyzed found some benefit, but they were low quality studies.

So this doesn't necessarily mean that flossing doesn't work. It may just mean that dentists are already making money hand over fist and don't care enough to do good studies and validate that.

BTW what was specifically looked at was whether unsupervised flossing works. So another possibility is that flossing properly works but a lot of people do it ineffectively.

All things you would want a conscientious, science-based ADA to care about

Also surprised, it seems to make such a big subjective difference. One tip I got from a busy dentist who did not want more business: smear a little toothpaste on the floss before using it, work through all the places where teeth contact. Gets flouride in places where it normally would not get to.

The high priests of dental religion er.. science is currently holding a trial over evolutionary dentistry

Dr Mike Mew, of 'Mewing', faces misconduct hearing - https://www.theguardian.com/society/2022/nov/14/orthodontist...