Things I wish a dentist had told me a long time ago

I'm 28 years old, now, with a mouth full of fillings, and I'm still learning new things about how to take care of my teeth. Here are a few things I've learned about dental hygiene over the past few years, that I wish a dentist had told me about a long time ago (and wish I had listened to):

• Floss Every Day
  A lot of people think that flossing is just to remove big pieces of food from between your teeth. So if you floss one time, and no pieces of food come out, it was pointless, right? Wrong.


• Don't think you need to? Smell the floss!
  The other purpose fo flossing is to scrape germy residue off the sides of your teeth, which is something you may not be able to see. The thing that finally made me a believer in flossing was when a dentist had me use a piece of floss between some teeth, then *SMELL* the floss. If it stinks, you've removed germs from between your teeth, and it proves that flossing was a good idea after all. That was kinda gross, but very effective!
  
• Find the right brand/style for you
  Another thing is how difficult flossing can be, depending on how close together your teeth are, and what brand/style of floss you're using. If the floss is always getting stuck and/or shredding, you may want to try a thinner, stronger floss, like my personal favorite, Crest Glide floss. Ever since I learned about Glide floss and tried it, that's the ONLY kind I like.
  
• Start kids flossing early, so it's a regular part of their night-time brushing
  It's easy for kids to start flossing nowadays, with various fun-shaped "flossers" available. Kids don't even have to deal with wrapping floss around their fingers, which can be challenging for anyone, especally young children. I've got Oral-B Stages Disney Princesses and Toy Story flossers for my 2-year-old daughter and my 6-year-old son, respectively, and they use them every day. Until they get good enough at doing it themselves, I recommend taking turns... With my daughter, for instance, she does it herself first, then I do it.


• Avoid Soda
  Everyone should know this already, but I want to share some things I've learned more recently. Regular sugary soda is just plain evil. Diet soda is better, but still contains an awful lot of acidity, which can damage your teeth over time (I have first-hand experience with this phenomenon). Something interesting that I just learned last year, though, is that if you must drink soda, you should try to use a straw whenever possible. That way, the soda doesn't have to go through your front teeth while you're drinking it. Wish I'd known that sooner, as I've been a soda addict for a long time.


• Maybe Use a Strong Fluoride Mouthwash
  If your teeth are weak and very prone to cavities, like mine are, and/or the enamel is eroded away pretty bad, you may want to ask your dentist if you should use a mouthwash such as Colgate Phos-Flur or Colgate Fluorigard. These are available at many grocery and drug stores, and contain a much higher concentration of fluoride than other mouthwashes/toothpaste/tap water/etc.


• Don't Brush Too Hard
  Brushing is mainly just to polish, not to scrape. If your toothbrush-holding knuckles turn white at all when brushing, you're brushing too hard. This can wear away the enamel and make your teeth more sensitive and cavity-prone.
  

It's too late for me to ever have good teeth. I think they were weak to start with, and I've ruined them over the years, by drinking large quantities of soda daily for a long time, eating too much candy, brushing too hard, not flossing, etc. So, at this point, all I can do is try to prevent them from getting too much worse. Since I switched from regular sodas to diet sodas and started flossing daily about 4 years ago, I've only gotten 1 cavity. Before that, I always had 1-3 cavities at every dentist appointment. I also lost 20-30 pounds by switching to diet sodas*, which was not my intention, but it was a nice side effect.


* Results probably not typical, and were based on switching from about eight 12oz cans of Mountain Dew/day to eight 12oz cans of Diet Coke/day.

Is FOX trying out Google AdSense for their TV commercials now?

It's not much of a stretch to believe that, although I have absolutely no facts to back up that idea. It certainly can't be too far off, the way things are going with Google these days.

My only basis for posing this question is this:

I just watched this week's episode of 24 last night, in which the phrase "marshall law" was frequently mentioned. I didn't fast forward through some of the commercials, because I was doing something else and it wasn't convenient to do so, and one of them caught my attention (during two different commercial breaks).

It was an ad for the department store, Marshalls, which started out with the line "Marshall's Law Number 21..." (or something like that).

It was probably purely coincidental, but if it was done on purpose somehow, that was pretty clever! I've never seen/heard that ad before, but a Yahoo search for "marshall's law number" did return this page, which makes it look like they did have ads with a similar opening line in December 2005.

Side-effects of taking care of your teeth

From Chris Pirillo's blog, Toothpaste Can Help You Lose Weight:

...
Went to dentist for checkup and got reamed by the hygenist for not taking better care of my teeth. Since I have poor memory skills, I decided to form a new habit, that of brushing immediately after every meal. Which led to not eating between meals or after supper. Know what? I started losing weight.
...

This reminded me of something I've been meaning to blog about for a while now. I posted it as a comment on Chris's blog entry, but wanted to put it up here as well, for better visibility/archiving:

I found that braces have a similar effect, especially with rubber bands. It's such a pain to take care of your teeth when you have braces, that it makes me slightly less interested in eating. Rubber bands are supposed to be worn anytime I'm not eating, and they are a pain to attach, so that's yet another reason not to eat.

I've lost about 20 pounds in the past 9 months, since I got braces. I've also stopped biting my nails, a habit I've had for as long as I can remember. Not that I'd recommend braces as a dieting tool or habit-breaking technique (more of a very expensive torture device, I think).

Life without Google?

Two different articles came to be today, from completely different sources and interfaces, which shared an interesting common theme: Life without Google.

From Wired News: Google Users: I Can Quit Anytime:

Six days a week, Shari Thurow spends copious amounts of time conducting searches on Google. But each Saturday, she makes a point of observing a "Google-free day."

The rules are simple: Use any search engine except for Google. In practice, however, the policy is surprisingly difficult to implement.

From one of my favorite blogs: Googlefasting

Chris Pirillo is trying to spend two weeks (originally just one week) without using any of Google’s many services. Here’s his account of this digital adventure:

* The Mission Statement. “I’ve been growing increasingly concerned over how Google is starting to do more... and the world is just letting it do more without asking questions (because most users trust the brand blindly). Google is everywhere. I want it to be everywhere, but I also don’t want it to be everywhere – because that’s very scary.”

* Day 1. “Still can’t figure out how to work MSN Search. The results are just... not relevant. I must be doing something wrong.”

This was interesting to me, because in my first blog post ever, back in November 2004, I was already talking about how much I depend on Google on a daily basis, and the potential for future Google withdrawal issues:

I noticed recently that I google for programming / utility / OS / etc-related information all the time. I mean, I've known this for a while... I think I probably do at least 10-50 google searches a day on average. If they changed to a pay service at some point (can't see that happening, but I've pondered it), I'd probably get depressed and resort to (gasp) books and real people for information.

It was nice to see that other people are already bravely trying this out, so I don't have to. :) Also, coincidentally, I was just thinking within the past few days "I wonder what ever happened to Lockergnome" (an email list I used to subscribe to, back in the late 1990s, which had computer tips, tricks, software reviews, etc.).

As it turns out, Chris Pirillo (from the "Googlefasting" post above) was the author of that Lockergnome email list. Small world. He's got a blog here, which I've now subscribed to. Cool!