Drop Dead Healthy

Clean teeth are linked to a healthy heart. Their connection is why you get the scary—if not quite scientifically rock-solid—estimates that flossing will add 6.4 years to your life.

Right now I’m at a “dental spa.” The Internet listed several and I figured I should try one. I didn’t know what I’d find, but the word “spa” sounded so tranquil, I assumed it had to be an improvement in tooth care.

I thought perhaps it’d be a hushed oasis in midtown New York filled with the sound of bamboo wood chimes, the scent of citrus, and the sight of toned bodies. I’d slip on my complimentary fluffy white bathrobe and fluffy white slippers. I’d ease into a hot tub, maybe get a little seaweed wrap on my face. Then my spa dentist would massage my teeth with a lavender-scented loofah, not the mini-pickaxes used by regular nonspa dentists. Then I’d rinse my mouth with natural springwater from Baden-Baden and leave in a state of joyful repose.

Instead, it turns out, a “dental spa” isn’t too different from a “dental office.”

Oh, they try to gussy it up a bit. There are purple-and-white crystals in the waiting room. A red Buddha figurine. And most spalike of all, I get a complimentary ten-minute foot massage. As I lie back, mouth ajar, with a dental hygienist jamming cotton into my cheeks, a bald man squeezes my toes and ankles. Not bad.

Still, there is no disguising that this is a dentist’s office where unpleasant dental procedures take place. You can put patchouli oil on a pig, but it’s still a pig.

Then again, maybe I should stop complaining. I just read an interesting and terrifying book called The Excruciating History of Dentistry. If you ever feel mopey about modern life—about how you can’t get Wi-Fi in the train station, say—pick up this book. I don’t have room to explain its horrible revelations, but consider these two facts: Dentists used to extract teeth with a large wrench while squeezing the writhing, unmedicated patient’s head between the legs. And ancient Roman dentists prescribed tying a frog to the jaw as a way to fix loose teeth. So in comparison, a dental spa is paradise.

The dental spa offers the usual delights—fillings and root canals—but I’m here to get a regular old cleaning. And also to try a new procedure, or at least new for me: teeth whitening. CNN ran a story on my in-progress health quest, and I went ahead and read the comments on the Internet about the report. You know, just in case I was feeling too happy or secure. Some were nice, but I’ve blocked those out. The only one I remember: “He has yellow teeth, and he’s trying to tell me how to be healthy?”

I wouldn’t call them yellow. I prefer butter, oatmeal, or calla lily, or something else more Benjamin Moore paint wheely. But the commenter had a point. So off I went.

The dental hygienist—a bald, pudgy man—squirts bleach on my teeth, paints my lips with petroleum jelly, and inserts a large, blue rubber Hannibal Lecterish mouthpiece. Then he pulls the UV-light blasting machine down and sticks it against my teeth. I look like I’m kissing a DustBuster.

He explains that the UV light will activate the bleach and give me glowing teeth.

“Ishn’t oo-vee light da-n-er-ous?” I ask.

He shakes his head. “No, no. This UV light is not dangerous.”

He flips the switch, and the DustBuster starts humming. Forty-five minutes later, I look in the mirror. My teeth are definitely a few shades whiter. No one is going to mistake my mouth for an Antarctic snow drift, but they’re better than before.

When I get home, I Google the safety of UV-light tooth-whitening treatments. Sure enough, it’s not recommended. One study in a journal called Photochemical & Photobiological Sciences found that the treatments gave patients four times the radiation of sunbathing. Vanity can be dangerous.

String Theory and Practice

In the weeks preceding my dental spa appointment, I’d made several pilgrimages to a traditional, Western dentist and also interviewed an American Dental Association spokesperson. My question: How do I get the world’s healthiest teeth? The answer is threefold, two-thirds of which are disappointing.

Let me get those out of the way first. Brushing and flossing. You can’t avoid them.

Before this project, I’d flossed maybe three times in my life. I saw it as unnecessary, a bit show-offy. I brushed my teeth. Wasn’t that enough? Sadly not. You need to clean your tooth cracks of the aforementioned thousand types of bacteria before they migrate to the bloodstream.

I started sharing Julie’s Glide Comfort Plus floss. I do it each night before brushing (before is preferable, so that you can brush out the dislodged bacteria). Were you aware there’s controversy over flossing methods? One faction recommends pulling the string all the way through the crack between each tooth so you don’t cause damage when you tug the floss upward. I tried this. It took almost an extra scene of 30 Rock to get through. So I’ve gone back to the slacker up-and-down method.

It’s both amusing and depressing to me just how quickly I became self-righteous about my dental regimen. Only a month after I began flossing regularly, I had lunch with a friend who said she never stuck string between her teeth.

I looked at her dismissively. Then I heard myself saying: “How can you not floss?” Ah, the enthusiasm of the recent convert.

I also changed the way I brush. I got a soft toothbrush and pledged to scrub for two minutes. Two minutes! This is no small thing. Normally, I brush for twenty seconds. Two minutes requires Dalai Lama–level patience. It’s best if you do those two minutes using what’s called the modified Bass Method.

“Let me give you a lesson,” I said to Julie one night in front of the bathroom mirror.

“Don’t go up and down like you’re erasing a pencil mark. Start at the gum at a forty-five-degree angle, and push the brush down. Then lift the brush back up to the gum and do it again.”

She listened and tried it.

“Now, that was actually helpful,” she said.

“That’s nice to hear.”

“It’s weird to realize you’ve been doing something wrong for forty years.”

I know what she’s saying. Before this project, I never knew I was doing so many everyday tasks incorrectly: chewing, going to the bathroom, brushing my teeth. Am I yawning properly? Sneezing? High schools should offer a class called Really Basic Life Skills 101.

And now for the third, far more pleasant part of tooth care: chewing gum.

Several studies have indicated that chewing sugar-free gum after meals can help prevent tooth decay. This is especially true if the gum contains xylitol, a sweetener found in such brands as Ricochet, PowerBite, and some Trident products, because bacteria can’t break it down. The Nordic nations are far ahead of us on this one. In Finland, schoolchildren are encouraged to chew xylitol gum. There’s some evidence xylitol can help prevent ear infections in kids.

Chewing gum provided a double thrill—unconsciously, I felt like I was doing something wrong, thanks to years of antigum propaganda from my parents. But intellectually, I knew I was doing something right.

Checkup: Month 13

Weight: 158

Total miles walked while writing: 810

Total hours spent watching Dr. Oz show: 156

Years closer to death: 1 (I had my birthday).

Sweet-potato fries stolen from my son’s plate at various brunches: 36

I’m plugging away at my to-do list. Did I mention it’s got lots of items? This month I was able to check off a big one: I attended a religious ritual, which is, at least arguably, good for the health.

We went to a Purim festival at our synagogue. Purim, as you might know, is the celebration of Queen Esther’s rescue of the Jewish people from the evil King Ahasuerus. But over the centuries, it’s evolved into a kind of Jewish Halloween. You dress up in costumes and eat high-fructose food.

It’s preferable if the costumes have some sort of Jewish connection. My kids wore a Superman costume, a Batman costume, and a Flash costume.

I consoled myself that Superman is kind of Jewish. Like many Jews, he was an immigrant who changed his name. (Jules Feiffer calls Superman the “ultimate assimilationist fantasy.”) Plus, he works in the media, which is a good Jewish thing to do.

In any case, we’re off to temple.

“Come on, superheroes!” said Julie. “Let’s get on those sneakers.”

Let me take this moment to say that—as long as I don’t eat the simple-carb-filled hamantaschen—this ritual is probably good for my health.

Numerous studies have shown that religion and health are linked. A study by the University of Texas’s Population Research Center found that those who made weekly visits to a house of worship lived, on average, seven years longer than those who never visit.

As Stanford biologist Robert Sapolsky writes in Why Zebras Don’t Get Ulcers, religion is thought to be healthy for several reasons, including:

• It provides a close-knit community.

• It gives a sense of purpose to life. You believe that events happen for a reason—a worldview that lowers stress. If your child gets sick, you can say that God gave you this challenge because He knew you could handle it.

But before you go out and buy a stack of Bibles, let me toss in a whole bunch of caveats. As Sapolsky points out, studying religion’s impact on health is tricky. There are tons of complicating factors. For one thing, some religious people might be less likely to smoke or drink heavily. Plus, he says, “Religion can be very good at reducing stressors, but it is often the inventor of those stressors in the first place.” If you believe that masturbation will land you in hell, your cortisol will rise.

In any case, there’s at least some correlation between religion and health. Which isn’t exactly why we joined the synagogue. Julie and I joined this synagogue after my year of living biblically because we wanted to give our sons a taste of their heritage, even if they decide to ignore it later.

I won’t, unfortunately, get the stress-reducing benefit of believing that everything was meant to happen for a divine reason. I’m agnostic. Or more precisely, after my year of living biblically, I’m an agnostic with a veneration for rituals. As a pastor friend calls it, I’m a “reverent agnostic.” Whether or not there’s a God, I feel there’s room for the sacred in my life. Prayers of thanksgiving can be sacred. Time with the family can be sacred. Dressing up as Superman—definitely sacred.

And the Sabbath—that can be sacred as well. I still try to observe the Sabbath. I don’t do the full Orthodox no-pressing-elevator-buttons Shabbat. I just try not to answer my e-mails or do Facebook updates, and try to spend the day with my family.

This year, I’ve had to grapple with whether to exercise on the Sabbath, since for me, exercise is work. I figure running after my kids as they zoom down the sidewalk on their Razor scooters? That’s okay. Going to the gym? I try to avoid it.

There haven’t been a lot of rigorous studies on whether the Sabbath reduces stress, but I do know that I get a feeling of release on Friday night, a school’s-out-for-summer wave of relief.

On Purim, we arrived at the synagogue and went downstairs. Dozens of Spider-Mans and princesses and a couple of Scooby-Doos scampered around the synagogue basement. The kids flipped the stuffed frogs into the holes in a carnival game. Zane got a smiley face painted on his cheek by a middle school volunteer. He’ll later cry about spilled toothpaste, and his tears will smear the smiley face, an irony that even he, a four-year-old, had to admit was kind of amusing. But overall, it’s good to be a part of this community, any community, and my cortisol levels recede.