Flossing the latest wisdom to be brushed off
Another biblical health commandment was recently struck down, threatening our wellness-obsessed universe.
“Thou Shalt Floss” — one of the most important health rules of the 21st century — has been found to be of questionable value, shocking every one of us who has teeth.
Like most people, I’d never really questioned flossing. It was annoying, time-consuming, and sometimes painful — so I just assumed it must be good for us.
Now, I’m rethinking my lost floss time.
I’m not a religious flosser, but I’ve spent tens of hours of my life flossing, and thousands more hours feeling guilty that I wasn’t.
Not to mention the money! God, when I think of all the money I wasted on floss, maybe I could have bought a yacht?
In fairness, the latest research isn’t saying flossing doesn’t work, just that there’s no real proof that it does. A massive review of 25 major studies concludes there’s “weak” scientific evidence that flossing has any effect in reducing plaque, gum disease or your dental bills.
That’s why the U.S. government has quietly dropped flossing from its health recommendations for the first time in almost four decades.
However, the American Dental Association continues to advise flossing once a day — so don’t sell your stockpile of tiny floss dispensers on eBay yet.
Flossgate is just the latest in a recent spate of health bombshells that have rocked our wellness world.
Two years ago, we discovered those one-a-day multivitamins we’d been taking since infancy, like a life-support drug, weren’t necessary.
Last year, many of our nastiest food villains were rehabilitated. Eggs are suddenly healthy again, along with cheese and other tasty saturated fats.
I can’t believe we spent all those years eating I Can’t Believe It’s Not Butter.
It won’t be long before skim milk disappears from supermarket shelves, replaced by a new craze for healthy five-per-cent milk — “fortified with extra superfat.”
Health advice is like Donald Trump — forever contradicting itself.
As kids, we grew up with much ancient medical wisdom passed down over the generations. Advice like: “Don’t swim on a full stomach” — even if you’d only eaten a slice of toast.
Or: “Put butter on a burn” (and make it even worse).
After decades of following this advice, we were told we were victims of old wives’ tales. But today, it’s much the same, only now we’re victims of “old science tales.”
For the last decade, we’ve been told to drink eight glasses of water a day till we were all waterlogged. But today’s studies dismiss that as outdated and advise that we just drink … when we’re thirsty.
Sitting is already the new smoking, but now standing is suddenly becoming the new sitting — and we’re constantly supposed to move. But how? Soon, we may all be buying bicycle desks that you pedal around your office.
What dangers will we discover next? The risk of vegetable overdose? Or of over-exercise — because we all have only a certain number of breaths to live, and when we exercise, we use them up faster?
It seems almost everything that’s good for us is doomed to be bad for us.
Take my favourite new study in the New England Journal of Medicine. It examines why asthma and allergies are rare among Amish farming communities at a time when these problems are soaring in the overall population.
It turns out the reason is the Amish live on very small farms where their cowsheds are right beside their homes, so their kids are exposed to barnyard dust.
Our hygiene-obsessed world has been protecting us from our natural allergy protection: cow dust.
It won’t be long before Health Canada recommends having a cow in every kitchen, as well as taking a daily dust tablet.
They will also recommend that every child should sleep in a manger — at least until more studies determine they all have fleas.