Surprisingly little evidence for usual wisdom about teeth
Dentist here, AMA<p>By the way:
- there <i>is</i> scientific evidence in dentistry just like any other branch in medicine
- there are good and bad dentists just like in any other profession
- the good ones tend to be very scientific and evidence-based (I know I am, everything I recommend and do is based on solid evidence, and I provide links to pubmed to any patient that asks for information)
- a good dentist should be able to answer any of your questions or doubts in a split second, I often draw simple sketches to explain concepts to patients
- please use your common sense: even though it might be hard to prove with 3 standard deviations that flossing makes a big difference (for all sorts of reasons that statisticians know very well, including the difficulty of tracking a large group of patients), it's pretty obvious that removing rotting food from your gums is <i>good</i> and leaving it there to putrefy is <i>bad</i>, don't you think? same goes for all the other claims...a powered toothbrush is better simply because it does more iterations per minute than a manual one...again, common sense