
Less Common Oral Hygiene Options
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Less Common Alternatives For Oral Hygiene!
You almost certainly brush your teeth. You might use mouthwash. A lot of people floss for three weeks at a time, often in January.
There are a lot of options for oral hygiene; variations of the above, and many alternatives too. This is a big topic, so rather than try to squeeze it all in one, this will be a several-part series.
- The first part was: Toothpastes & Mouthwashes: Which Help And Which Harm?
- The second part was: Flossing, Better (And Easier!)
- The third (and for now at least, final) part will look at some less common alternatives.
Tooth soap
The idea here is simplicity, and brushing with as few ingredients as possible. Soap cleans your teeth the same way it cleans your (sometimes compositionally quite similar—enamel and all) dishes, without damaging them.
We’d love to link to some science here, but alas, it appears to have not yet been done—at least, we couldn’t find any!
You can make your own tooth soap if you are feeling confident, or you might prefer to buy one ready-made (here’s an example product on Amazon, with various flavor options)
Oil pulling
We are getting gradually more scientific now; there is science for this one… But the (scientific) reviews are mixed:
Wooley et al., 2020, conducted a review of extant studies, and concluded:
❝The limited evidence suggests that oil pulling with coconut oil may have a beneficial effect on improving oral health and dental hygiene❞
The “Science-Based Medicine” project was less positive in its assessment, and declared that all and any studies that found oil pulling to be effective were a matter of researcher/publication bias. We would note that SBM is a private project and is not without its own biases, but for balance, here is what they had to offer:
A more rounded view seems to be that it is a good method for cleaning your teeth if you don’t have better options available (whereby, “better options” is “almost any other method”).
One final consideration, which the above seemed not to consider, is:
If you have sensitive teeth/gums, oil-pulling is the gentlest way of cleaning them, and getting them back into sufficient order that you can comfortably use other methods.
Want to try it? You can use any food-grade oil (coconut oil or olive oil are common choices).
Chewing stick
Not just any stick—a twig of the Salvadora persica tree. This time, there’s lots of science for it, and it’s uncontroversially effective:
❝A number of scientific studies have demonstrated that the miswak (Salvadora persica) possesses antibacterial, anti-fungal, anti-viral, anti-cariogenic, and anti-plaque properties.
Several studies have also claimed that miswak has anti-oxidant, analgesic, and anti-inflammatory effects. The use of a miswak has an immediate effect on the composition of saliva.
Several clinical studies have confirmed that the mechanical and chemical cleansing efficacy of miswak chewing sticks are equal and at times greater than that of the toothbrush❞
Read in full: A review of the therapeutic effects of using miswak (Salvadora Persica) on oral health
And about the efficacy vs using a toothbrush, here’s an example:
Comparative effect of chewing sticks and toothbrushing on plaque removal and gingival health
Want to try the miswak stick? Here’s an example product on Amazon.
Enjoy!
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Afterwork – by Joel Malick and Alex Lippert
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Regular 10almonds readers may remember that one of the key unifying factors of Blue Zones supercentenarians is the importance of having purpose, sometimes called ikigai (borrowing the Japanese term, as a nod to the Okinawan Blue Zone).
The authors are financial advisors by profession, but don’t let that fool you; this book is not about retirement financial planning, but rather, simply addressing a problem that was often presented to them while helping people plan their retirements:
A lot of people find themselves adrift without purpose at several points in life. Often, these are: 1) early twenties, 2) some point in the midlife, and/or 3) retirement. This book addresses the third of those life points.
The authors advise cultivating 10 key disciplines; we’ll not keep them a mystery; they are:
- Purpose
- Calendar
- Movement
- Journaling
- Faith
- Connection
- Learning
- Awareness
- Generosity
- Awe
…which each get a chapter in this book.
A note on the chapter about faith: the authors are Christians, and that does influence their perspective here, but if Christianity’s not your thing, then don’t worry: the rest also stands on its own feet without that.
The general “flavor” of the book overall is in essence, embracing a new period of enjoying what is in effect the strongest, most potentially impactful version of you you’ve ever been, as well as avoiding the traps of retirement “sugar rush” and “retirement drift”, to define, well, a more purposeful life—with what’s most meaningful to you.
The style of the book is self-help in layout, with occasional diagrams, flowcharts, and the like; sometimes we see well-sourced stats, but there’s no hard science here. In short, a simple and practical book.
Bottom line: if your retirement isn’t looking like what you imagined it to be, and/or you think it could be more fulfilling, then this book can help you find, claim, and live your ikigai.
Click here to check out Afterwork, and indeed live a future that’s worthy of dreams!
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How To Know When You’re Healing Emotionally
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The healing process can be humbling but rewarding, leading to deep fulfillment and inner peace. Discomfort in healing can be part of growth and self-integration. Because of that, progress sometimes looks and/or feels like progress… And sometimes it doesn’t. Here’s how to recognize it, though:
Small but important parts of a bigger process
Nine signs indicating you are healing:
- Allowing emotions: you acknowledge and process both negative and positive emotions instead of suppressing them.
- Improved boundaries: you improve at expressing and maintaining boundaries, overcoming fear of rejection, guilt, and shame.
- Acceptance of past: you accept difficult past experiences and their impact, reducing their hold over you.
- Less reactivity: you become less reactive and more thoughtful in responses, practicing emotional self-regulation.
- Non-linear healing: you understand that healing involves ups and downs and isn’t a straightforward journey.
- Stepping out of your comfort zone: you start taking brave steps that previously induced fear or anxiety.
- Handling disappointments: you accept setbacks and respond to them healthily, without losing motivation.
- Inner peace: you develop a sense of wholeness, and forgiveness for yourself and others, reducing self-sabotage.
- Welcoming support: you become more open to seeking and accepting help, moving beyond pride and shame.
In short: healing (especially the very first part: accepting that something needs healing) can be uncomfortable but lead to much better places in life. It’s okay if healing is slow; everyone’s journey is different, and doing your best is enough.
For more on each of these, enjoy:
Click Here If The Embedded Video Doesn’t Load Automatically!
Want to learn more?
You might also like:
Why You Can’t Just “Get Over” Trauma
Take care!
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Why STIs Are On The Rise In Older Adults
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Three Little Words
Sexually Transmitted Infections (STIs) are often thought of as something that predominantly plagues younger people… The truth, however, is different:
❝Rising divorce rates, forgoing condoms as there is no risk of pregnancy, the availability of drugs for sexual dysfunction, the large number of older adults living together in retirement communities, and the increased use of dating apps are likely to have contributed to the growing incidence of STIs in the over-50s.
These data likely underestimate the true extent of the problem as limited access to sexual health services for the over 50s, and trying to avoid the stigma and embarrassment both on the part of older people and healthcare professionals, is leading to this age group not seeking help for STIs.❞
Read more: Managing The Rise In STIs Among Older Adults
That said, there is a gender gap when it comes to the increased risk, for example:
❝A retrospective study from the USA involving 420,790 couples aged 67 to 99 years, found that widowhood was associated with an increased risk of STIs in older men, but not women❞
~ US Dept of Health & Human Services
Source: CDC: | Sexually Transmitted Disease Surveillance
Is abstinence the best preventative, then?
It is inarguably the most effective, but not necessarily the best for everyone.
This is because for most adults, a healthy sex life is an important part of overall wellbeing.
See also: Mythbusting The Big O
Even in this case there is a gender gap in:
- the level of importance placed on frequency of sexual interactions
- what act(s) of sexuality are held to be most important:
❝Among sexually active men, frequent (≥2 times a month) sexual intercourse (P < .001) and frequent kissing, petting, or fondling (P < .001) were associated with greater enjoyment of life.
Among sexually active women, frequent kissing, petting, or fondling was also associated with greater enjoyment of life (P < .001), but there was no significant association with frequent intercourse (P = .101).
Concerns about one’s sex life and problems with sexual function were strongly associated with lower levels of enjoyment of life in men and to a lesser extent in women.❞
Source: Sexual Activity is Associated with Greater Enjoyment of Life in Older Adults
If you have the time to go into it much more deeply, this paper from the Journal of Gerontology is much more comprehensive, looking also at related lifestyle factors, religious/political backgrounds, views on monogamy or non-monogamy (of various kinds), hormonal considerations, the impact of dementia or other long-term disabilities that may affect things, widowhood, and many other elements:
The National Social Life, Health, and Aging Project: An Introduction
What’s the best preventative, then?
Regular health screening for yourself and your partner(s) is an important key to preventative health when it comes to STIs.
You can Google search for a local STI clinic, and worry not, they are invariably discreet and are well-used to everybody coming in. They’re just glad you’re being responsible about things. It’s also not their job to judge your sexual activities, even if it’s something you might have reason to wish to be secretive about, try to be honest there.
Secondly, most of the usual advice about safe sex still goes, even when there’s no risk of pregnancy. For example, if there’s at least one penis involved, then condoms remain the #1 barrier to all manner of potential infections (we know, almost nobody likes condoms, but sometimes the truth isn’t what we want to hear).
Lastly, if there’s at least one vagina involved, then please for the love of all that is holey, do not put anything there that could cause a yeast infection.
What can cause a yeast infection? Pretty much anything with sugar, which includes but is not limited to:
- Most kinds of food that Cosmo-style “liven things up in the bedroom” advice columns might suggest using (including fruit, honey, chocolate sauce, whipped cream, etc)
- Hands that are not clean (watch out for bacteria too)
- A mouth that has recently been eating or drinking anything with sugar in it, and that includes many kinds of alcohol, as well as milk or hot drinks that had milk in
Yeast infections are not nearly so serious as the STIs the other measures are there to avoid, but they’re not fun either, so some sensible policies in that regard are always good!
On a related note, see also: How To Avoid UTIs
Recap on the single most important part of this article:
At all ages, it remains a good health practice—unless one is absolutely celibate—to regularly get oneself and one’s partner(s) checked for STIs.
Take care!
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The Truth About Handwashing
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Washing Our Hands Of It
In Tuesdays’s newsletter, we asked you how often you wash your hands, and got the above-depicted, below-described, set of self-reported answers:
- About 54% said “More times per day than [the other options]”
- About 38% said “Whenever using the bathroom or kitchen
- About 5% said “Once or twice per day”
- Two (2) said “Only when visibly dirty”
- Two (2) said “I prefer to just use sanitizer gel”
What does the science have to say about this?
People lie about their handwashing habits: True or False?
True and False (since some people lie and some don’t), but there’s science to this too. Here’s a great study from 2021 that used various levels of confidentiality in questioning (i.e., there were ways of asking that made it either obvious or impossible to know who answered how), and found…
❝We analysed data of 1434 participants. In the direct questioning group 94.5% of the participants claimed to practice proper hand hygiene; in the indirect questioning group a significantly lower estimate of only 78.1% was observed.❞
Note: the abstract alone doesn’t make it clear how the anonymization worked (it is explained later in the paper), and it was noted as a limitation of the study that the participants may not have understood how it works well enough to have confidence in it, meaning that the 78.1% is probably also inflated, just not as much as the 94.5% in the direct questioning group.
Here’s a pop-science article that cites a collection of studies, finding such things as for example…
❝With the use of wireless devices to record how many people entered the restroom and used the pumps of the soap dispensers, researchers were able to collect data on almost 200,000 restroom trips over a three-month period.
The found that only 31% of men and 65% of women washed their hands with soap.❞
Source: Study: Men Wash Their Hands Much Less Often Than Women (And People Lie About Washing Their Hands)
Sanitizer gel does the job of washing one’s hands with soap: True or False?
False, though it’s still not a bad option for when soap and water aren’t available or practical. Here’s an educational article about the science of why this is so:
UCI Health | Soap vs. Hand Sanitizer
There’s also some consideration of lab results vs real-world results, because while in principle the alcohol gel is very good at killing most bacteria / inactivating most viruses, it can take up to 4 minutes of alcohol gel contact to do so, as in this study with flu viruses:
In contrast, 20 seconds of handwashing with soap will generally do the job.
Antibacterial soap is better than other soap: True or False?
False, because the main way that soap protects us is not in its antibacterial properties (although it does also destroy the surface membrane of many bacteria and for that matter viruses too, killing/inactivating them, respectively), but rather in how it causes pathogens to simply slide off during washing.
Here’s a study that found that handwashing with soap reduced disease incidence by 50–53%, and…
❝Incidence of disease did not differ significantly between households given plain soap compared with those given antibacterial soap.❞
Read more: Effect of handwashing on child health: a randomised controlled trial
Want to wash your hands more than you do?
There have been many studies into motivating people to wash their hands more (often with education and/or disgust-based shaming), but an effective method you can use for yourself at home is to simply buy more luxurious hand soap, and generally do what you can to make handwashing a more pleasant experience (taking a moment to let the water run warm is another good thing to do if that’s more comfortable for you).
Take care!
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How to Permanently Loosen a Tight Psoas
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What Is Your Psoas?
Your psoas is a deep muscle in your lower back and hip area that connects your spine to your thigh bone. It helps you bend your hips and spine, making it a hip flexor.
In today’s video, Your Wellness Nerd (the YouTube channel behind the video below) has revealed some great tips on loosening said tight hip flexors!
How to loosen them
First off, the big reveal…your tight psoas is likely stemming from an overlooked cause: your lower back! The video kicks off with a simple technique to loosen up that stiff area in your lower back. All you need is a foam roller.
But, before diving into the exercises, it’s essential to gauge your current flexibility. A basic hip flexor stretch serves as a pre-test.
Note: the goal here isn’t to stretch, but rather to feel how tight you are.
After testing, it’s time to roll…literally. Working through the lower back, use your roller or tennis ball to any find stiff spots and loosen them out; those spots are likely increasing the tension on your psoas.
After some rolling, retest with the hip flexor stretch. Chances are, you’ll feel more mobility and less tightness right away.
Note: this video focuses on chronic psoas issues. If you have sore psoas from a muscular workout, you may want to read our piece on speeding up muscle recovery.
Is That All?
But wait, there’s more! The video also covers two more exercises specifically targeting the psoas. This one’s hard to describe, so we recommend watching the video. However, to provide an overview, you’re doing the “classic couch stretch”, but with a few alterations.
Next, the tennis ball technique zeroes in on specific tight spots in the psoas. By lying on the ball and adjusting its position around the hip area, you can likely release some deeply held tension.
Additionally, some of our readers advocate for acupuncture for psoas relief – we’ve done an acupuncture myth-busting article here for reference.
Other Sources
If you’re looking for some more in-depth guides on stretching your psoas, and your body in general, we’ve made a range of 1-minute summaries of books that specifically target stretching:
- 11 Minutes to Pain-Free Hips (perfect for psoas muscles)
- Stretching Scientifically
- Stretching & Mobility
- Stretching to Stay Young
The final takeaway? If you’re constantly battling tight psoas muscles despite trying different exercises and stretches, it might be time to look at your lower back and your daily habits. This video isn’t just a band-aid fix; it’s about addressing the root cause for long-term relief:
How did you find that video? If you’ve discovered any great videos yourself that you’d like to share with fellow 10almonds readers, then please do email them to us!
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Luxurious Longevity Risotto
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Pearl barley is not only tasty and fiber-rich, but also, it contains propionic acid, which lowers cholesterol. The fiber content also lowers cholesterol too, of course, by the usual mechanism. The dish’s health benefits don’t end there, though; check out the science section at the end of the recipe!
You will need
- 2 cups pearl barley
- 3 cups sliced chestnut mushrooms
- 2 onions, finely chopped
- 6 large leaves collard greens, shredded
- ½ bulb garlic, finely chopped
- 8 spring onions, sliced
- 1½ quarts low-sodium vegetable stock
- 2 tbsp nutritional yeast
- 1 tbsp chia seeds
- 1 tbsp black pepper, coarse ground
- 1 tsp MSG or 2 tsp low-sodium salt
- 1 tsp rosemary
- 1 tsp thyme
- Extra virgin olive oil, for cooking
- Optional garnish: fresh basil leaves
Method
(we suggest you read everything at least once before doing anything)
1) Heat a little oil in a large sauté pan; add the onions and garlic and cook for 5 minutes; add the mushrooms and cook for another 5 minutes.
2) Add the pearl barley and a cup of the vegetable stock. Cook, stirring, until the liquid is nearly all absorbed, and add more stock every few minutes, as per any other risotto. You may or may not use all the stock you had ready. Pearl barley takes longer to cook than rice, so be patient—it’ll be worth the wait!
Alternative: an alternative is to use a slow cooker, adding a quart of the stock at once and coming back about 4 hours later—thus, it’ll take a lot longer, but will require minimal/no supervision.
3) When the pearl barley has softened, become pearl-like, and the dish is taking on a creamy texture, stir in the rest of the ingredients. Once the greens have softened, the dish is done, and it’s time to serve. Add the garnish if using one:
Enjoy!
Want to learn more?
For those interested in some of the science of what we have going on today:
- The Magic Of Mushrooms: “The Longevity Vitamin” (That’s Not A Vitamin)
- The Many Health Benefits Of Garlic
- Chia: The Tiniest Seeds With The Most Value
- Black Pepper’s Impressive Anti-Cancer Arsenal (And More)
- Monosodium Glutamate: Sinless Flavor-Enhancer Or Terrible Health Risk?
Take care!
Don’t Forget…
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