Oral-Systemic

Throwback: Six Mouth Infections You Need to Get Rid of if You Have Heart Disease

Posted on by Cass Nelson-Dooley MS
Address Oral Health to Prevent Heart Attacks, Strokes, and High Blood Pressure When you ask most people, “What can you do to treat heart disease?” they will say “diet and exercise.” But how many people mention mouth bacteria at the top of the list for turning around heart disease? Even medical doctors rarely mention this as a top contributor to heart disease. While diet and exercise are critical, don’t overlook the sinister bacteria lurking in the mouth that cause gum infections and send the ...
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Why Oral Microbiome Testing Might Be One of the Most Important Health Tests You’ve Never Heard Of

Posted on by Jessica Lederhausen
    What if we could identify risk long before disease develops? For years, dentistry has focused on repairing damage after it occurs. Today, advances in oral microbiome science allow us to understand why disease develops and how to prevent it. Your Mouth Is an Ecosystem  Your mouth is home to a remarkable ecosystem of 700–900 species of bacteria. Most are beneficial and help protect your teeth, gums, and overall health. Good oral health isn't about eliminating bacte...
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The Story Behind Referral Conduit: Why We Are Uniting Dentistry and Medicine 

Posted on by Michelle Hougland
    Every dental professional has experienced that exact moment of frustration. You are looking into a patient's mouth, seeing severe periodontal inflammation, and you know with absolute certainty that it is wrecking their systemic health—whether they are managing diabetes, cardiovascular disease, or cognitive decline.  You want to co-manage their care with their primary care physician. But when you try to reach out, you hit a brick wall. The pathway just isn't there.  ...
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Throwback: Leaky Gum Syndrome & The Oral-Systemic Link

Posted on by Cass Nelson-Dooley MS
Few of us think much about the health of our mouth lining unless our gums are swollen and red or if we have mouth pain. But the tissue lining your gums and the inside of your mouth is vitally important to keeping you safe from heart disease, joint pain, and brain disease. How do healthy gums protect you from all of that? Your mouth lining is a critical defense between infections in your mouth and the rest of your body. Bleeding, swollen, or sore gums can point to a weak defense in the mouth ...
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We Are Talking About the Oral-Systemic Connection—But Are We Talking to Each Other?

Posted on by Michelle Hougland
    A New Way of Thinking  For a long time, dentistry and medicine lived on separate islands. Today, we all know the truth: the mouth and the body are completely connected. We read the research on periodontal pathogens and systemic health, and we track the inflammation.  But a massive practical gap remains: How do we actually talk to each other across that dental-medical divide?  That is exactly why we started the Dental Referral Marketing Podcast and built Referral ...
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How Salivary Testing Changed the Way We Look at Whole-Body Health

Posted on by Zach & Savannah Labie
When my husband Zach was diagnosed with Stage 3 colorectal cancer at just 33 years old, our world changed overnight. Like many families facing a serious diagnosis, we found ourselves asking one question over and over: Why? Beyond treating the cancer itself, we wanted to better understand the factors that may have contributed to his overall health. That search led us to nutrition, lifestyle changes, detoxification, and eventually to an area we had never considered before—oral health. ...
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Bleeding Gums Aren’t Just a Hygiene Issue – They’re Often a Diagnostic Opportunity

Posted on by Tosha Kozloski, RDH
For a long time, bleeding gums were treated as a home care conversation. Brush better. Floss more consistently. Let’s keep an eye on it… but what are we actually waiting for? That’s how most of us were taught. And honestly, it’s exactly how I practiced early in my career too. In 2008, when I began using salivary diagnostics alongside phase-contrast microscopy, something shifted for me. For the first time, I wasn’t making educated guesses. I could identify which microbes were prese...
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When Data Changes Minds: How Chlorhexidine Irrigation and Non-Surgical Laser Therapy Transformed a Resistant Microbiome in a Reluctant Patient

Posted on by Robert Benavides DDS
    A patient presented for a new patient exam to our practice after many years of “routine” and “regular” cleanings elsewhere. Although clinical and radiographic findings indicated chronic infection and the need for comprehensive non-surgical therapy including scaling and root planing, irrigation, and bacterial decontamination, the patient declined adjunctive care and requested to receive scaling alone. Local anesthesia was administered, and scaling and root planning w...
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Throwback: Words of Wisdom from Dr. John Kempton

Posted on by John Kempton DDS
Every patient is different. Overcoming a patient’s obstacles to treatment may take some finesse. The diagnosis and treatment plan are typically the easier task. In this series, we have asked the experts from our Protocol Directory, “How would they help the patient overcome their obstacle(s)?” When we asked Dr. John Kempton from LAUNCH Oral Systemic Health to respond to “That’s more than I was expecting,” here is his approach. When patients respond to our consultation with “That’s more ...
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Hormonal Contraceptives and the Oral Microbiome: The Missing First Signal in Salivary Diagnostics

Posted on by Dr. Neusha Najafi
We’re Having the Wrong Conversation The debate around hormonal contraceptives has grown louder and more polarized. Mood changes. Inflammation. Fertility concerns. Some of these concerns are valid. Much is oversimplified. But almost all of it misses the starting point. We are debating hormones while ignoring the environment they enter. We keep focusing on hormones in isolation. Ovaries, cycles, receptors. More recently, the gut microbiome has entered the discussion through the estrobo...
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