Summer Is Time for Sun Safety – & Sunscreen Safety
Time in the sun - a/k/a getting vitamin D - is essential for your mouth/body health, but it’s also important to protect your skin from overexposure. Unfortunately, a lot of sunscreens contain some potentially problematic ingredients. In fact, a new study in JAMA...
Update on the EPA/Fluoridation Lawsuit
Despite the fact that the fluoridation lawsuit we’ve been following is set to resume soon, and despite this being a landmark case - the first to go to trial under the 1976 Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA), which allows citizen groups to petition the EPA to...
A Laser Facial Makeover from Your Dentist? Yes!
The COVID-19 crisis has led to plenty of anxiety across the board - including, it seems, increased anxiety about facial appearance. That’s not so surprising as it seems once you consider how so many more of our interactions with others are taking place online. As...
More on the Oral Health/Lung Health Connection
Just as your mouth and gut are connected - the health of one depending on the other - so, too, your mouth and lungs. As one recent review put it, the mouth and lungs are part of a continuum. This continuity is reflected in their microbiomes. Emerging evidence...
It’s Not So Much Which Healthy Diet You Choose, More That You Just Stick To It
Regular readers of this blog know a bit about the relationship between gum health and heart health. And like other inflammatory conditions, both are affected by what you eat. But does sticking to one diet or another better when it comes to cardiovascular disease...
Perils of Periodontitis: IBD Edition
Perhaps nowhere is the mouth/body relationship clearer than in gum disease - a condition that’s been said to affect nearly 80% of all Americans and scientifically linked to many other inflammatory conditions, from diabetes and heart disease to Alzheimer’s and...
Fluoridation Ruling Postponed
The fight against fluoride hit a speed bump last week as US District Court Judge Edward M. Chen postponed his ruling in the suit between the EPA and plaintiffs from several advocacy groups that want to end fluoridation due to the health risks it poses. Chen...
You Can Babystep Your Way to Better Health
What’s an all-natural and inexpensive way to improve your physical and mental health, lower your risk of gum disease, diabetes, and chronic inflammation, and give you a better chance at a longer and happier life? If an easy answer sounds too good to be true, brace...
Spicing Up Your Diet May Decrease Inflammation
Having healthy teeth and gums starts with eating a healthy diet - heavy on the veg, proteins, and good fats, light on added sugars and other refined carbs that fuel inflammation. But what about reducing inflammation - that hallmark of gum disease? A recent study in...
The Next Frontier of Biocompatible Dentistry
Dentistry can repair teeth that are broken or badly decayed. It can replace teeth that are lost. But what if we could actually regenerate those damaged tissues instead? That’s the hope and promise of dental stem cell research. Though we’re a long way off from being...
Will Fluoridation Finally End in the US?
Hopes are high that an upcoming federal trial in San Francisco will finally spell the end of fluoridation nationwide. This is the case we told you about before, in which the Fluoride Action Network (FAN) has teamed up with several other plaintiffs in what may be a...
Is Your Baby’s Food Too Sweet?
If you’re buying commercially prepared baby food, the answer is probably yes. A team of researchers from Penn State and the University of Colorado recently surveyed a range of baby foods claiming to be “loaded with dark green vegetables.” Those claims, they found,...
How We’re Safely Providing Dental Care in the Age of COVID-19
Dental care isn’t separate from healthcare but an important specialty within it, for oral health and systemic health are totally intertwined. You can’t have one without the other. Holistic, biological dentists understand this perhaps better than anyone. Yet in the...
Breastfeeding & Your Baby’s Oral Health
There are lots of benefits to breastfeeding, not least of which are delivering antibodies that help your baby fight off viruses and bacteria, and a lower risk of conditions like asthma, allergies, and ear infections. Breastfeeding is also crucial for your child’s...
Garden with Kids & Harvest the Benefits
With spring long since sprung and summer pretty much here, most folks are well into gardening season. If you haven’t already begun, it’s not too late to start, especially considering that the value of growing your own veggies goes well beyond grocery store savings,...
The Link Between Gum Disease, Lung Disease, & Death
Science continues to link gum disease to many systemic health problems, including heart disease, stroke, diabetes, rheumatoid arthritis, and cancer. Scientists have highlighted its relationship with respiratory diseases, as well, including asthma, COPD, and...
Blue Light, Cravings, & Your Oral Health
It's no surprise that internet use has spiked dramatically since COVID-19 lockdowns went into effect around the world. Time spent watching streamed content has more than doubled, and data traffic is up even more than that. And why not? Screen time can be a...
Vitamin D vs. Chronic Inflammation
A paper just published in the journal Nutrients suggests that vitamin D may be a good option for reducing risk of COVID-19. Through several mechanisms, vitamin D can reduce risk of infections. Those mechanisms include inducing cathelicidins and defensins that can...
CBD & Other Cannabinoids for Healthy Teeth & Gums? New Research Suggests So
There’s a good reason why health news these days can seem like all coronavirus all the time: We need to know how to stay safe during this pandemic and want to know what progress is being made to flatten the curve and develop effective treatments. Yet in the...
Sugar Rots Your Teeth, but Might Also Take a Bite From Your Life
No sooner had we blogged about sugar’s tendency to displace other nutrients in your diet, we ran across some other recent research suggesting that sugar may shorten your lifespan in more ways than you think. Of course, sugar is a major contributor to tooth decay....