Courtesy of google.com
Wishing for the good-old-days, makes me look old-fashioned, no doubt. But I wish for them, all the same. The electronic age has complicated my life in so many ways. I’m in a perpetual race to manage the upgrades, master new apps and avoid hacker traps along the way. All this worry supersedes my concern about snoops in the government and social media.
True, the internet serves as window to the whole of human wisdom. Too often, there’s more than I can assimilate. Sometimes, I feel I’m exploding with information. One more genocide, one more pandemic or nuclear doomsday scenario, and I want to unplug from the world. In the good-old-days, I enjoyed the illusion I had some control over my life.
Case in point. Recently, my dentist suggested a “deep clean” of my aging gums. She was talking about charging me more money for more pain. Naturally, when I came across an article praising Aloe Vera mouth wash as the patron saint of tired gums, I read it. Why not? Over 200 million Americans “routinely swig and swish mouthwash daily” to prevent tooth decay. (“Health scare of the Week,” The Week, pg. 21, De. 25, 2017.) Can so many users be wrong?
Apparently, they can. A recent study, three years in the making, shows mouthwash can increase the risk for diabetes. (Ibid, pg. 21.) Mouthwashes are highly effective at ridding the gums of harmful bacterial, but they also destroy those friendly to the production of nitric oxide, a compound that helps regulate insulin. (Ibid, pg. 21.)
In the good-old-days, I’d have never known I had to choose between good gums and high blood sugar. In the good old days, mouth washes didn’t exist. Well, to be honest, I recall my mother sometimes washed out my mouth with soap. But that’s another story.
