Responsibility

For Sarah, who is worth maintaining my body for.
Less than a 3 minute read.

They say oral hygiene is the foundation of whole-body health. Brushing twice a day is no problem, usually, but like the rest of a person the teeth and gums start to wear out over time. It makes perfect sense. There is no reason for them to outlast the heart or the brain, each of which have a service life of a hundred fifty years or less.

Without yet being old, but still no longer young, oral hygiene is an area where one can give an earnest attempt to assert control over the aging process. The knees may hurt, the back may ache or periodically give out, scars may accumulate inside and out. Brushing and flossing daily takes responsibility for an aging mouth. A healthy mouth could be the foundation of a healthy body.

Diet, rest, and exercise are intertwined in important ways. A tired body struggles to exercise. Poor nutrition hurts good sleep and makes exercise harder and more painful. Feeling things slip in this triangle can create a sense of desperation, and ultimately feelings that one has let oneself go. That, of course, is a dangerous spiral. Flossing, though. Flossing is easy enough. The first step back up the spiral can be a small one.

Flossing daily after a regular cleaning indicates care is being paid to the teeth and gums, and maintains a healthy baseline. Dental plaque builds up constantly, but can be removed entirely with daily brushing and flossing. Flossing gets plaque off teeth at the gum line. Fail to floss, and the plaque hardens and can’t be removed at home. This is all a matter of mouth science, and keeping up with maintenance is just a few minutes of minimal effort.

Those few minutes of minimal effort won’t make anyone less fat. It won’t correct any diet or make exercise any easier. It won’t help with a good night’s sleep. Still, stepping off the spiral has to start somewhere. Today I reached the end of the floss roll, and that’s not nothing.