I’ve been flossing every other day for the past month, which is probably up there with the longest stretch of time I’ve managed to floss regularly. I still have to force myself to sit through the whole cycle of the electric toothbrush, though.
My poor dental hygiene habits aside, the new flossing habit got me thinking about the differences in our responses to negative reactions associated with doing certain things. That was a number of empty phrases! Let me be more concrete. For example: if you floss and your gums bleed, I think the conventional wisdom is that they’re bleeding because you don’t floss enough, ergo sudden flossing is trauma, and ultimately this all means you should be flossing more often. If you do, your gums will get used to it and stop bleeding (true, in my empirical sample of one).
But the opposite seems to be the received idea for milk and milk products. That is, if you consume dairy and have digestive problems, no one says you should be consuming dairy more often. Typically, they would say your bad response to dairy means you should avoid it because it’s clearly causing you issues. However, I’ve found that the same holds true for milk-drinking that holds for flossing…when I drink milk consistently (as I did for, I don’t know, the first 21 years of life) I never had the slightest stomach pain from it. The first time milk/cheese/ice cream (and it was the whole trifecta in one meal) made me ill (and it was violent!) was when I had been living in Bangkok for six months, and had consumed very little dairy up until that visit to a touristy beach town, whereupon after finishing my gelato I realized that I was in serious trouble.
I think there’s probably a flaw in my logic/in my basis for comparing flossing and dairy consumption–that they aren’t a one to one comparison, there’s some other contributing factor–but I did wonder about the similarities, especially in light of the new “actually, we lied; you don’t need to floss” admission of a few months ago.
Other medical myths of my own creation, which seem logical to me but are based purely on musing and not medical knowledge:
Retinol/Retin-A: Okay, if the way it works is to turnover skin cell production, getting rid of the aged cells on the surface and bringing forth “youthful” cells…does that mean your supply of youthful cells is being artificially shortened? Surely there isn’t an *unlimited* supply…it seems like using a retinoid would just run you through your layers of “young” skin more quickly.
Resting heart rate/cardio: My heart rate varies between 72 and 80, which is on the high side. I get that higher resting heart rate = oh no, your heart is having to work harder!/you’re “using up” your lifetime supply of heartbeats! (yes, I know that’s not what doctors are literally saying, but it seems to follow). But the way to lower your resting heart rate is to do cardio regularly…i.e. raising your heart rate tremendously for periods of time. Couldn’t it be possible that athletes have low resting heart rates as COMPENSATION for how hard their hearts have had to work/how many beats have transpired during all of that peak heart-rate activity? Is this a chicken-egg situation?
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