By Michael G. Rehme, DDS, NMD, CCN It’s often said that it takes about 21 days to introduce a new routine into our lifestyles, though truth be told, science has shown that it actually takes about 66 days, on average. Either way, repetition and commitment are two...
Several years ago, we blogged about a couple of fascinating studies that showed how dietary changes alone can be enough to actually reverse the progress of gum disease. The key was shifting away from refined carbs to something closer to a paleo, primal, or Wise...
If you spend much time on social media, you may have recently heard about the British doctor who ate junk food for a month to document its effects on his physical health. Regardless, you can probably guess that the results were none too pretty. I aged about ten...
Prevention is the best medicine, especially when it comes to gum disease, which affects nearly all adults. For it’s not just a matter of keeping your teeth in your mouth - untreated periodontal disease ultimately means tooth loss - but also supporting your whole...
While it might seem like the links between gum disease and other inflammatory conditions is something that’s only been recently discovered, some of them have been known for many decades. Researchers were talking about the oral/heart health relationship way back in...
For lots of us, the holidays are a time of amped up stress - although this year, it might be hard to tell the difference between holiday stress and what we’ve all grappled with throughout this wildly challenging year. The American Psychological Association reports...
At the start of this week, word went out to smokers and vapers that their habits may increase the risk of severe illness from COVID-19 - not that this is at all surprising. COVID-19 is a respiratory disease. Smoking and vaping hurt the lungs and weaken the immune...
Chronic inflammation is one of the common denominators of gum disease and systemic illness. But “systemic” includes more than just physical conditions but mental, as well. Through recent years, there’s been a rising tide of both medical and media interest in the...
The link between gum disease and other inflammatory conditions is well established. Those systemic health problems include heart disease, arthritis, diabetes, and some cancers. Consider breast cancer, for instance. A while back, we looked at a 2011 study out of...
If you’re a regular reader of this blog, you how gum disease can affect your overall health – and how evidence suggests that treating it may ease the symptoms of chronic conditions such as diabetes. Now, new research suggests periodontal therapy may help control...
So what do you do to tame chronic, low-grade inflammation? The first step, if possible, is to eliminate the source of the problem. If that source is gum disease, then it’s essential to address it as soon as possible. After all, early stage gum disease is...
While acute inflammation is a necessary part of the immune response and healing process, chronic inflammation is another story. Chronic inflammation is what happens when the inflammatory response doesn’t stop as it should. It keeps on keeping on, like a...
If you’re a regular reader of this blog, you know how the inflammation that underlies gum disease can hurt your overall health. Yet as we noted last week, short term – acute – inflammation is an essential bodily process. But what actually happens during...
As we’ve noted before, folks with gum disease are more likely to have diabetes than those without. In fact, the more severe the gum disease, the more likely a patient was to be diabetic. But we also have new evidence that periodontal treatment can actually help...
If you suffer from gum disease – and most Americans have it to one degree or another – getting regular exercise is one of the best things you can do. This is the surprising conclusion of research published last month in the Journal of Clinical Periodontology. The...
There’s one more ketogenic study we wanted to share with you – one we stumbled on just a day after our previous post. And it focuses on a point addressed by one of those earlier studies: inflammation. Yes, along with longer lifespans, greater strength and...
A little stress now and then is okay - a good thing, in fact. It’s what helps you respond to any kind of threat or challenge. And it’s unavoidable. As Hans Selye, the endocrinologist who first identified the stress response, put it, To eliminate stress completely...
If your life demands that you gulp down your food and hit the ground running, a new study suggests that the old admonishment to “chew your food” is good advice. Turns out, the simple act of chewing your food before swallowing it can boost your immune system....
If you’re overweight or obese, there’s a good chance you’ve been screened for type 2 diabetes. That’s because doctors, like the rest of us, associate the condition with excess weight, especially if it’s belly fat. But a new study in the Annals of Family Medicine...
Whether you bake, boil, roast or fry them, potatoes are the most eaten vegetable in the United States. (Tomatoes come in a distant second.) It might be that the ruddy spud, wholesome in appearance, cheap to eat, is a perfect medium. Butter, bacon, cheese, sour...