Hate-Love #5: Flossing

I hate...

Flossing. As if my nightly post-shower routine isn't long enough between lotioning up, un-knotting my hair, brushing my teeth, and gargling with Listerine, I have to floss now too?? I used to use those awesome little pre-made dental floss picks (like the ones on the left), but after learning from my dentist that they're only 80% effective, I have returned to strangling my poor fingers nightly with regular floss. I guess the complaint about any flossing aid is that it holds the floss in a straight line, which doesn't allow you to wrap the floss around the tooth as you torture your gums; making it less effective than manual flossing. Seriously though, shouldn't the geniuses behind Sonicare have solved this problem already? It's 2010 for crying out loud, my musical listening devise creates shopping lists from my favorite recipes, tracks my bills and personal events, fills my prescriptions, and finds the best local burrito joint, and I'm still flossing manually? Maybe we need to get Steve Jobs in on this one, then we can finally get a 97% effective electronic flosser that tracks plaque buildup, schedules dental cleanings, and provides colorful instant photos of the bacteria we're killing while we floss. And it's not just cutting off the circulation to my finger tips or the added step in my routine that bugs me: it's also how expensive floss is, and that I hate getting that gunk from in between my teeth all over my fingers, YUCK!

but being that there is no iFloss gadget for me to rush out and pre-order yet...

I love...

That I know the actual reason why everyone MUST floss every night. Yeah, yeah, we all know, we're supposed to floss every day so that our teeth don't just just fall clean out of our heads by the time we're 65, and no one thinks dentures are sexy, but I think it's safe to say that people don't floss as much as they should. Up until about a month ago I didn't floss regularly either, why? Because I would go to the dentist and besides trying to carrying on a conversation with me while he stuck large metal objects inside my mouth, he would always say: "Everything looks good int there." And I would think to myself the same thing that everyone else does, "Ha-ha! Little does he know that I rarely floss! I must have super evolved teeth that don't actually need flossing!" Well, I have news for you, there's no such thing. Up until I met the amazing Dr. Alexander Farr, I thought I had super-evolved, no-floss teeth just like you probably do, but Dr. Farr gave me a dose of reality too powerful to ignore. So without trying to sound to public service announcement-y, here's the gum gospel according to Dr. Farr: first of all, gum disease doesn't set in until you're 35, so really your gum health isn't a problem until you wake up on your 35th birthday and it's REALLY a problem (read: floss now, avoid gum disease on your 35th birthday). Also, as it turns out, the reason for flossing isn't to get thoe pesky bits of food from between your teeth that brushing doesn't grab (although this is an added bonus), the reason is to "shake up" the colonies of bacteria that like to form in the warm dark place below your gum-line. These colonies of bad bacteria like to party in large groups between your teeth and gums and do what everyone likes to do at a party: eat, have lots of sex (to make more bacteria), and spew waste everywhere. As the groups of bacteria rock out together, the party just gets bigger and bigger until there are so many that our white blood cells have to muscle in and break things up. The problem, however, with white blood cells coming in to regulate and eat up the bad bacteria is that eventually they, well, burst. And when the white cells burst they don't just fade into gummy oblivion, they release an acid so gnarly that it dissolves away the ever so important bones that hold your teeth in your skull. As your bones dissolve, your gums retreat along with them, until eventually your teeth fall out. Sounds fun, right? Well, you can prevent this cycle of bacterial party carnage by, yes, you guessed it, FLOSSING! When you effectively floss, you break up the clusters of bacteria under your gum line, stopping all that bacterial reproduction along with the need for bursting, bone eating white blood cells. YEAH! So even though I hate flossing, I love my pearly whites and want to have them until I die from choking on a New York Strip steak at 110. I also love being able to wax poetic about my new flossing knowledge, and I feel that my spiel would be far less effective with dentures.