Let them eat nuts: dentists want office "cake culture" to end in 2017

As many people return to work after Christmas full of good intentions, leading dentists are urging them to make one more resolution for the new year: eat less cake in the office.

The faculty of dental surgery (FDS) at the Royal College of Surgeons has urged employers to tackle workplace “cake culture” which is contributing to the obesity epidemic and poor oral health.

The faculty is urging companies to swap biscuits for fruit and nuts in meetings, scrap the most sugary treats from vending machines and make low-sugar options more available and visible, while employees should stop snacking and eating birthday cake and other treats throughout the week.

“We need a culture change in offices and other workplaces that encourages healthy eating and helps workers avoid caving in to sweet temptations such as cakes, sweets and biscuits,” said the dean of the faculty, Prof Nigel Hunt.

In 2015-16 around 63% of adults in England were classified as either obese or overweight and nearly 64,000 over-18s were admitted to hospital because of tooth decay. According to the FDS, 40% of people made a resolution to lose weight last year, and 24% said they wanted to eat more healthily.

The office had become one of the main places where people consumed excessive amounts of sugar thanks to rewards from bosses and colleagues celebrating special occasions, said Hunt.

The faculty has produced a series of tip for workers to cut back on sugar.

It says they should avoid snacking and keep sugar as a lunchtime treat, reduce portion sizes and introduce a “sugar schedule”, so if birthdays happen throughout the week, cakes are only doled out on Fridays.

Only eating sugar at lunchtime can help keep teeth healthy as each time sugar is consumed it fuels acid formation, which softens tooth enamel and leads to decay, according to the faculty. Less frequent sugary snacks means the teeth “come under attack less frequently”.

It urged more companies to employ the “nudge theory” tactics used by companies such as Google, which places confectionery in opaque containers, uses smaller plates and makes healthy foods more visible – resulting in its New York employees eating 3.1m fewer calories over seven weeks.

The FDS also called on the government to restrict sugary food and drink price promotions and consider forcing supermarkets to replace high-sugar foods at the point of sale with healthier alternatives, using legislation if necessary.

The government plans to introduce the soft drinks industry levy in April 2018 which will apply a charge to makers and importers of soft drinks that contain more than a certain amount of sugar.

Let them eat nuts: dentists want office "cake culture" to end in 2017

Dentists have stopped being strung along by the great flossing yarn. About time | Ollie Jupes

Having had to swallow American jibes about “British teeth” for all these years, my little chest swelled with dental pride on Tuesday when I learned that the Americans don’t know absolutely everything about teeth – and dental patients in particular. For dental floss has now officially been declared dead in the US.

Well, I say dead. A great many American dentists still want it kept on a respirator just in case it shows a flicker of life – like when there’s a piece of Cajun chicken lodged between the most distant molars, or you need to make a video of your child’s tooth being pulled out by a homemade space rocket.

The fact is, the British dental profession gave floss a quiet burial years ago after sneaking it out the back and finishing it off humanely with a lump-hammer. Yes, in the UK we realised ages ago that – and if you still religiously floss daily, look away now – flossing simply doesn’t work as a health measure (or a fetish).

Related: Everyone recommends flossing – but there’s hardly any proof it works

Let me say that again. FLOSS DOES NOT WORK. Not at all. There’s not a shred of evidence that it does any good whatsoever. I mean, it seemed a good idea at the time – 1882 to be precise – but modern evidence would demonstrate that it doesn’t improve gum health one jot (to use the scientific term).

The British Society of Periodontology, the organisation that specialises in gum health, has known about the black heart of floss for years and currently recommends the use of single-tufted interdental brushes for effective cleaning between the teeth. The American Dental Association and the American Academy of Periodontology however, are largely ignoring the fact that their government’s latest Dietary Guidelines for Americans has quietly dropped its recommendations for flossing because under the law, the guidelines must be based on scientific evidence.

The enthusiasm with which American dental professionals promote flossing despite the evidence, has raised the notion of a conspiracy with floss manufacturers. I don’t believe for a second that American dentists are in cahoots with floss makers, but why do they cling to the notion that floss is a good idea and keep recommending it? Perhaps because, like flossing, it’s a habit and after over a century of promoting the use of floss, it must be extremely difficult to backtrack and say: “Houston, we may have a problem.”

The Brits never had that dilemma. As a nation we were never great flossers anyway and now we know that our patients had an uncanny and instinctively accurate inkling that the lacklustre recommendations of their dentists and hygienists were best ignored.

Related: The secret life of a dentist: some patients think superglue will fix their toothache | Anonymous

I can see why Americans like to promote floss. As a dentist I can appreciate that if flossing is done “properly”, the technique is precise, even elegant. If you have a regular flosser in the chair, you know the patient cares about their teeth, having dedicated a fair chunk of their day to a particularly tedious and often unpleasant task.

But even with the best technique, the evidence doesn’t support flossing as an adjunct to brushing. Most patients, even if they bother to get the minty-waxed out the box, are exceptionally heavy-handed and macerate their gums like they’ve been chewing on bare vacuum cleaner flex. Even in controlled studies, after instruction, the patients taking part couldn’t floss properly. I know of no dentist who flosses. Not one. And of the colleagues who don’t walk away bored witless when I have broached the subject of flossing, most admit that when they tried it, it was really difficult to do effectively, even with their assumed level of dexterity.

Nowadays in the UK, we (I hope, how I hope) all recommend single-tufted interdental brushes as an adjunct to regular brushing. The studies prove beyond doubt that they significantly reduce plaque deposits, decreasing gum inflammation and reducing the risk of gum disease and bone loss. They either have a conventional toothbrush handle or look a bit like a toilet brush on a stick, though it’s best not to think about lavatories while you are using them. The only time I reluctantly suggest floss is when a patient has an area so crowded, floss is the only way of getting between the teeth. And even then I cross my fingers.

Floss is dead. Long live the single-tufted interdental brush.

Dentists have stopped being strung along by the great flossing yarn. About time | Ollie Jupes

Wallander Newsnight The Dentists Television review

Krister Henriksson signs off as Wallander in ‘an ending he could not come back from’. Photograph: Baldur Bragason/BBC/Yellow Bird/Baldur Bragason

Wallander (BBC4) | iPlayer

Newsnight (BBC2) |iPlayer

The Dentists (ITV1) | itvplayer

Nicely, it was a poignant farewell from Wallander, or at least the edition starring Krister Henriksson – ie not to be confused with the Swedish Television-film unique with Rolf Lassgård, or, without a doubt, Kenneth Branagh’s British incarnation, quickly to return to BBC2. I have liked and been baffled by all 3, even though it’s hard to recapture now the peculiar novelty this present when had, the Scandinavians possessing long trumped themselves with darker dramas such as The Killing and The Bridge, against whose byzantine, leisurely unravellings Wallander‘s a single-off mystery format seems as exhausted as its dishevelled hero.

Certainly, this valedictory series has seemed facile and plodding at times, even though Saturday’s finale, a tale about an Italian restaurateur kidnapped and kept in a box, was nicely sustained. The principal theme of this series in any case has been Wallander’s regular descent into dementia. To borrow Chekhov’s outdated dictum that a man who mislays his service pistol in the very first episode will be shedding his thoughts by the last, you could say Kurt has been receiving there. You did feel that any person utilizing Post-It notes to bear in mind the names of his family members had no location at the wheel of a police vehicle.

Henriksson rose wonderfully to the job. His Wallander – emotionally difficult, brooding and self-fancying – has by no means invited the viewer’s warmth, but in his Lear-like roaring towards this new, cruel, unreadable fate we feared for him and of course ourselves. Away from the furtive denial and impotent rage, although, Wallander’s changing mental state – a second of bewilderment, a vanishing imagined – was marked by the smallest of adjustments, a reminder that the Television detective’s situation currently manifests itself in puzzlement, rumination and absent-mindedness. Here, seeking as if one thing was dawning on him meant fairly the opposite. He peered out to sea as if the solution was there. He smoked as if his life depended on it. Henriksson agreed to make this last series if they gave him an ending he couldn’t come back from. They did him proud, and vice versa.

‘End of phrase larks’: Boris Johnson and Jeremy Paxman on a tandem for Paxman’s last edition of Newsnight. Photograph: Newsnight/Twitter

It was also, as if you could miss it, Jeremy Paxman’s final stand soon after 25 many years with Newsnight. It is hard to inform if they had been happy years, but in that time he has manufactured political interviewing appear not so significantly an artwork type as a personality disorder. He did appear to be sick of it and has not been the very same considering that he came back from the summer time hols final August sporting the beard of a round-the-planet yachtsman. Oh, he’s been enjoying his Mr Grumpy properly sufficient, but was his heart even now in it? On Wednesday he bowed out in style, giving a beleaguered man in Washington an earbashing over the ineptness of the Iraqi army and wanting to know from Lord Mandelson why Ed Miliband was as well-known as a flatulent dog in a lift. Offered the programme’s new enthusiasm for frivolity, there had been bound to be some finish-of-phrase larks and confident sufficient Paxman was soon on a 1901 bicycle made for two with Boris Johnson, and Michael Howard popped up with a quick wisecrack. I would ready myself for the last waltz more than the closing credits – perhaps with Kirsty – but it was the New Seekers singing about wanting to create the globe a home and furnishing it with love. Oh my aching sides!

The Dentists: ‘something to smile about’.

It was difficult to observe The Dentists (“the nation’s biggest dread!”) unless of course you liked the sight of children’s blood. Beneath-fives in the north west have the worst teeth in England, they advised us, as if that had been one thing to celebrate. It did make clear why we had been in Manchester, at the University Dental Hospital and not, say, Harrogate or Royal Tunbridge Wells, which have dentists also, though not the kind to produce national pleasure.

Of course this was not so much about dentists as our previous friends, the feckless functioning lessons, who permit their youngsters to dwell on chocolate biscuits and fizzy drinks and end up getting to have their teeth yanked out a dozen at a time. One mother had what she thought was an inarguable philosophy vis-a-vis her four-year-old and his love for sweets. “You have to keep your little ones content. If their teeth fall out, fair ample,” she stated. Far from wanting to just slap somebody, the hospital workers have been angels to the point of indulgence, coaxing and cooing at the poor wee lambs, and comforting their teary mothers and fathers as they turned on the laughing fuel. “She’s a smart cookie,” was the nurse’s unfortunate decision of words ahead of the pliers came out and the dreadful sound of wrenching filled our ears.

The grownup patients were even worse, hand-picked for their oral neglect and squeamishness in the face of a needle. Robert had what he stated was some sort of ingrowing root heading for his nose. One particular anxious young bride-to-be hoped she hadn’t left it as well late to exchange her gaping cavities and stumps for a set of dentures in time for the huge day.

It was not all entertainment, despite the perky incidental music that our light-weight documentaries look to borrow from 1 yet another. This was, they reminded us, a major teaching hospital and it was heartening to see that the specialists here could include as well as subtract – sorting out James, for illustration, a man who had never ever outgrown his little one teeth and was afraid to open his mouth in public. Another patient – who had suffered some aggressive cancer that had left him with no a nose – was having his encounter rebuilt around titanium implants. In the end, it gave us all one thing to smile about.

Wallander Newsnight The Dentists Television review

No a lot more fillings as dentists reveal new tooth decay treatment method

The new therapy, Electrically Accelerated and Enhanced Remineralisation (EAER), could be obtainable inside three many years. Photograph: Hermes Morrison 2/Alamy

Scientists have developed a new pain-cost-free filling that enables cavities to be repaired without having drilling or injections.

The tooth-rebuilding approach designed at King’s University London does away with fillings and rather encourages teeth to fix themselves.

Tooth decay is typically eliminated by drilling, right after which the cavity is filled with a materials such as amalgam or composite resin.

The new treatment, named Electrically Accelerated and Enhanced Remineralisation (EAER), accelerates the all-natural movement of calcium and phosphate minerals into the broken tooth.

A two-step method initial prepares the damaged spot of enamel, then utilizes a tiny electrical present to push minerals into the restore site. It could be accessible within three years.

Professor Nigel Pitts, from King’s University London’s Dental Institute, said: “The way we deal with teeth these days is not excellent. When we restore a tooth by placing in a filling, that tooth enters a cycle of drilling and re-filling as, in the end, each ‘repair’ fails.

“Not only is our device kinder to the patient and greater for their teeth, but it really is expected to be at least as expense-effective as present dental treatments. Along with fighting tooth decay, our gadget can also be employed to whiten teeth.”

A spinout organization, Reminova, has been set up to commercialise the analysis. Based mostly in Perth, Scotland, it is in the process of seeking personal investment to build EAER.

The organization is the 1st to emerge from the King’s University London Dental Innovation and Translation Centre, which was set up in January to take novel technologies and flip them into new items and practices.

King’s School is a participant in MedCity, a task launched by the London mayor, Boris Johnson, to encourage entrepreneurship in the London-Oxford-Cambridge lifestyle sciences “golden triangle”.

The chairman of MedCity, Kit Malthouse, explained: “It truly is brilliant to see the actually inventive investigation taking place at King’s generating its way out of the lab so speedily and becoming turned into a new device that has the potential to make a real big difference to the dental overall health and patient experience of individuals with tooth decay.”

No a lot more fillings as dentists reveal new tooth decay treatment method

Scotland"s dentists increase by a third below SNP

The amounts of registration with an NHS dentist have also improved considering that the party took office in Might 2007. Photograph: Rui Vieira/PA

The number of dentists in Scotland has risen by practically a third in the past seven many years, according to most current figures.

In between September 2006 and September 2013, Scotland has gained 793 additional dentists – an improve of 32.6%, the SNP stated.

The levels of registration with an NHS dentist have also improved since the party took office, in May possibly 2007.

In March that 12 months, 67% of youngsters and 46% of adults have been registered with an NHS dentist.

As of 30 September 2013, 91% of youngsters and 82% of grownups have been registered.

A lot more than four.four million individuals are now registered – an improve of one.8 million considering that March 2007, the SNP explained.

The Scottish Nationwide celebration MSP Bob Doris, who is also deputy convener of the Scottish parliament’s wellness and sport committee, mentioned: “These figures are actually one thing to smile about. In certain it is vitally essential that kids find out excellent oral wellness early as they are considerably more likely to continue these habits later in lifestyle.

“The new 12 months is the perfect time to register at a dentist and get your teeth checked.

“These figures demonstrate that, soon after years of neglect underneath earlier administrations, real inroads have been created in making certain the provision of very first-rate dental services for the people of Scotland.”

Scotland"s dentists increase by a third below SNP