Daily. Floss with the baking soda... work it down into the gums. And your dentist is an idiot. Pumice is far harder than the enamel of your teeth... while baking soda is only 90% as hard as enamel, so it can't scratch it. Pumice in toothpaste will erode your enamel, baking soda will not.
The dentist at my office started as an engineer in the space program... and works with dental materials science... and is a full professor at the University of Alabama Mobile, Department of Dental Materials. They made him one just so he could give two lectures a year there! He has more alphabet after his title of DDS than we have room for on his letterhead. He was the Keynote speaker at the Indian Society of Oral Implantology in Pune India, just outside of Mumbai, in January, where they made him a National Scholar (although he's not Indian), with a special funny hat and orange scarf and all that... sort of an Indian Nobel (without the money). Trust him.
I do trust this. I use baking soda and peroxide 3x/week. Make a paste and floss it into the gum line. When I started doing this, about 20 years ago, my physician relatives all snickered and made comments about my being impressed with the foaming action. I have ignored them, as they have been wrong about H. pylori and several other newer therapies that work.
I have a couple of questions, though:
1) Does baking soda or peroxide or bleach solution damage bonding? While I have bonding on 3 teeth, I have only had degradation on one incisor. I was blaming the baking soda/peroxide, even though it didn’t make sense, since the other bonded teeth were fine.
2) I have been on a low dose doxycycline for posterior stye (chalazion) off and on for a few years. I notice when I am on doxy, my mouth is much fresher in the morning. I assume it is attacking oral bacteria. Doxycycline is also used in Lyme’s therapy. Do you have any info on that?
Thanks - I’m quite happy to use baking soda. One final question - do you have your patients use a regular brush or an electric brush? When I use the electric brush it seems like it gets under the gums better than the manual brush.