Inflammation is the key cause for most of our serious chronic diseases—cardiovascular disease, diabetes, cerebrovascular disease, rheumatoid arthritis, and Alzheimer’s disease, to name a few—and oral inflammation plays a major role. Dental professionals know that periodontal disease is an inflammatory disease. Cardiologists know that cardiovascular disease is an inflammatory disease. Yet when was the last ...
600: The number of doses of acetaminophen it takes to put a person at risk for kidney damage. But for a person who has chronic headaches, it doesn’t take long to make it to 600. Take my patient Nicole, for instance. Nicole came to see me after her physician, alarmed at the number of over-the-counter ...
One of the subjects in healthcare that affects everybody is Alzheimer’s disease. You’d be hard-pressed to find someone who hasn’t been affected by this debilitating disease, which so often robs us of our precious Golden Years and costs us billions every year in healthcare expenses. And unfortunately, it doesn’t appear that this problem is going ...
In my journey to know as much as possible about the connection between oral health and overall health, I have become a bigger science buff than I would have ever thought possible. The mouth is my area of expertise, so when I see new research that shows how I can help my patients live longer, ...
Truth be told, we are in a “perfect storm” in regards to dentistry—trying to come out of a diminished economy, an enormous demographic group (Baby Boomers) transitioning into retirement and government health insurance without dental insurance, and the competitive stress from the recent build up of providers. The entire U.S. healthcare industry is in flux, ...
A recent report from the American Dental Association showed that the number of adults visiting the dentist at least yearly has been declining over the past 7 years. As recently as 2010, it appears that more and more adults are putting off dental visits in an effort to save money. But it turns out that ...
I’m a big fan of looking back through history and seeing the progression of healthcare. Recently I was at a Civil War exhibit with my family, and many of the exhibits showed health problems that were relatively new at the time—cannonball and rifle wounds, shattered bones and general misery. But healthcare at the time rose to ...
I’ve always said that dentists can help patients in the bedroom by providing a solution to obstructive sleep apnea. But current research suggests that that statement may be more than just a clever play on words. A research team in Turkey found men with gum disease are more likely to have erectile dysfunction than those ...
This may be the most festive time of the year, but it’s sure not the healthiest. Gorging on unhealthy holiday favorites; staying up all night to get to the best bargains on gifts; stressing about family get-togethers; neglecting healthy habits for lack of time and energy—it’s a wonder any of us makes it to January ...
There has been a lot of talk among health experts lately about pancreatic cancer, a cancer that will claim the lives of more than 37,000 people in 2012 in the United States alone. New research links oral pathogens to pancreatic cancer, increasing men’s risk for the disease by a whopping 54%. This is substantial yet unsurprising ...
