According to some estimates, as many as 95% of Americans will, at some point, have a problem they might never notice — they grind their teeth together at night. Often, the only way someone will notice the problem is if their spouse tells them or if they wake up with an aching jaw.
There are a variety of potential causes that range from the disturbing and highly improbable (parasites in your jaw muscles) to the commonplace and widely accepted (stress in your life). Let's assume in this case that the trigger that makes the most sense to us today — that stress makes you grind your teeth in unconscious frustration at night — is the one that needs the most attention.
What you've just said, essentially, is that reducing stress can improve your dental health by eliminating the grinding problem. Well, there's a lot of advice out there about reducing stress — and almost every modern expert on the subject will tell you that being grateful for the good things in your life is one of the best ways to do it
It doesn't matter if you're grateful to God, grateful to the other people in your life, or simply abstractly counting your blessings, taking a few minutes to consciously acknowledge that you have good things in your life and expressing gratefulness for those things in whatever way best suits you is an amazing way to reduce stress — and thus, if you're a nighttime grinder, reduce the damage you're doing to your teeth as you sleep.
There are several other studies that link a less-stressed, more-grateful life to a systemic boost in overall health, which can in turn improve your oral health, but we wanted to give you at least one cause-and-effect sort of way in which simple gratitude can directly improve your oral health. It's a powerful thing, gratitude — we encourage all of you to use it.
Sunday, December 16, 2012
Friday, December 7, 2012
Gratitude Means Giving Back
Drs. Johnson and Risbrudt have always had a strong drive to give back to
the community — and to the world. That's why the entire office ran in
the Susan G. Korman Run For The Cure, and it's why we strive to do things, small and large, for our community whenever we get the chance.
It's easy, when you're a business, for cynical people to think that anything public you do as a service is some sort of self-centered act. In 2010, when Dr. Johnson gave the world's tallest man, Sultan Kosen, a smile makeover at no cost, several people called it a publicity stunt — but nothing could be further from the truth. There were other specialists, labs and professionals that were involved to make it happen.
The fact is — Dr. Johnson's wife Christa saw a documentary on Kosen and heard that, because of his pituitary disorder, his jaw had literally outgrown his teeth. He needed profound dental work, but he was from a poor village in Turkey and couldn't afford it. Dr. Johnson understood that there was an opportunity to give service to someone who had a profound need and no means, so he stepped up to the plate.
In 2010 Dr. Johnson lead a team of USC students on a mission trip to Honduras. In 2011 he lead them on a mission trip to El Salvador and in 2012 to Guatemala.
Every once in a while we reach out to a patient unexpectedly with a card or another gesture because it is in our hearts to do so. When we receive a response then it confirms why we do what we do. We give from our hearts and our hopes is that our patients know and feel it all the same. But that's hardly the only way that our office works to give back to our community — we also love to go the extra mile for our patients. It's one thing to participate in charitable events or give our services to those in need — but sometimes giving back can be as simple as reaching out to touch the people we meet that need moral support.
Every once in a while, we get a response like this one, and it just redoubles the fuzzy feeling we get when we reach out to someone. Jason's grandmother had just died, and we got together and sent him a condolences card that we all signed — a small enough act, but it sparked something in him that made him write back.
We don't do it for those letters that come back, but we always love it when they do. It's how we know that we're on the right track — giving back to our patients, our community, and our world.
It's easy, when you're a business, for cynical people to think that anything public you do as a service is some sort of self-centered act. In 2010, when Dr. Johnson gave the world's tallest man, Sultan Kosen, a smile makeover at no cost, several people called it a publicity stunt — but nothing could be further from the truth. There were other specialists, labs and professionals that were involved to make it happen.
The fact is — Dr. Johnson's wife Christa saw a documentary on Kosen and heard that, because of his pituitary disorder, his jaw had literally outgrown his teeth. He needed profound dental work, but he was from a poor village in Turkey and couldn't afford it. Dr. Johnson understood that there was an opportunity to give service to someone who had a profound need and no means, so he stepped up to the plate.
In 2010 Dr. Johnson lead a team of USC students on a mission trip to Honduras. In 2011 he lead them on a mission trip to El Salvador and in 2012 to Guatemala.
Every once in a while we reach out to a patient unexpectedly with a card or another gesture because it is in our hearts to do so. When we receive a response then it confirms why we do what we do. We give from our hearts and our hopes is that our patients know and feel it all the same. But that's hardly the only way that our office works to give back to our community — we also love to go the extra mile for our patients. It's one thing to participate in charitable events or give our services to those in need — but sometimes giving back can be as simple as reaching out to touch the people we meet that need moral support.
Every once in a while, we get a response like this one, and it just redoubles the fuzzy feeling we get when we reach out to someone. Jason's grandmother had just died, and we got together and sent him a condolences card that we all signed — a small enough act, but it sparked something in him that made him write back.
We don't do it for those letters that come back, but we always love it when they do. It's how we know that we're on the right track — giving back to our patients, our community, and our world.
Tuesday, November 13, 2012
Why We're Promoting Some New Gluten-Free Products
Dr. Johnson's office is promoting some new gluten-free products -- please stop by and ask! And we've gotten some questions about why a dentist, of all people, is interested in gluten intolerance. The answer is technically complex, but sweetly simple to explain; people with gluten intolerance who eat gluten frequently have horrible dental health.
The Technically Complex Explanation
Gluten causes someone with celiac disease -- the 'technical' name for gluten intolerance -- to have an autoimmune 'tantrum' whenever they eat wheat. This sudden flurry of autoimmune activity takes places entirely in the intestines, so there are no outward signs, but the results can be devastating.
What Can The Dentist Do?
The nutrient deficiency caused by a person with celiac disease eating gluten for an extended time can be seen in many places other than the teeth -- they often have bad skin, bad hair, emotional or mental imbalances, and so forth -- but rarely can the evidence be seen more powerfully than inside the mouth. That makes your dentist one of the best people to warn you that you may be gluten intolerant -- and by a happy coincidence, the dentist is already prone to dispensing advice about diet and health matters. Drs. Johnson and Risbrudt's decision to carry and promote some gluten-free products is the result.
The Technically Complex Explanation
Gluten causes someone with celiac disease -- the 'technical' name for gluten intolerance -- to have an autoimmune 'tantrum' whenever they eat wheat. This sudden flurry of autoimmune activity takes places entirely in the intestines, so there are no outward signs, but the results can be devastating.
- The immune system attacks and kills the villi (the threadlike projections inside your intestines that rummage through your food and extract the nutrients from it) in an attempt to keep the gluten from being absorbed into the body.
- With no villi, the intestines are unable to extract nutrients from your food properly. No matter how good your diet is, you simply cannot get the nutrients you need from your food.
- When your body is low on nutrients for an extended period of time, it directs what nutrients it can glean toward the most critical-for-life organs: the heart, brain, lungs, and so forth. The teeth are not on the body's 'critical' list.
- Over months of not getting any nutrients from the body, the teeth lose their ability to defend themselves from your normal oral bacteria, and you end up with cavities, gum disease, and more.
What Can The Dentist Do?
The nutrient deficiency caused by a person with celiac disease eating gluten for an extended time can be seen in many places other than the teeth -- they often have bad skin, bad hair, emotional or mental imbalances, and so forth -- but rarely can the evidence be seen more powerfully than inside the mouth. That makes your dentist one of the best people to warn you that you may be gluten intolerant -- and by a happy coincidence, the dentist is already prone to dispensing advice about diet and health matters. Drs. Johnson and Risbrudt's decision to carry and promote some gluten-free products is the result.
Thursday, November 1, 2012
The Bottom Line: Taking Care of Your Mouth to Take Care of Cancer
From The Journal of Oral Microbiology:
If there is indeed a causal link between oral microbiota and cancer, then the ultimate goal would be to prevent the development of cancer by interfering with the putative carcinogenic potential of the microbiome.
In other words, if the bacteria in your mouth are doing something that increases your risk of getting cancer, then the goal is to find something that we can do to counteract that risk. There are a few different tactics that you can use:
Reduce Overall Cancer Risk
Cancer risk may be affected by what's going on in your mouth, but your mouth really is only one small part of your body. If you're worried about an increase in cancer risk from one place, fight it by decreasing your cancer risk elsewhere. There are plenty of pages online about reducing your overall cancer risks, so we won't get into it here -- it's just one way to address the problem.
Reduce the Risk from Your Oral Bacteria
Cysteine is a non-essential amino acid that is commonplace in several foods. It's also been shown to prevent carcinogens from forming in its immediate environment -- so a regular mouthwash with a drop of cysteine in it could, in theory, reduce the cancer risk without actually doing anything else to improve your oral health. Of course, that seems kind of silly when you could just...
Reduce the Presence of Negative Bacteria in Your Mouth
And the way to do that is stuff you should already be doing every day -- brush, floss, use mouthwash, avoid sugary foods, eat a healthy diet, get decent exercise and get plenty of rest. It's amazing how much just taking care of yourself can keep you well taken care of.
If there is indeed a causal link between oral microbiota and cancer, then the ultimate goal would be to prevent the development of cancer by interfering with the putative carcinogenic potential of the microbiome.
In other words, if the bacteria in your mouth are doing something that increases your risk of getting cancer, then the goal is to find something that we can do to counteract that risk. There are a few different tactics that you can use:
Reduce Overall Cancer Risk
Cancer risk may be affected by what's going on in your mouth, but your mouth really is only one small part of your body. If you're worried about an increase in cancer risk from one place, fight it by decreasing your cancer risk elsewhere. There are plenty of pages online about reducing your overall cancer risks, so we won't get into it here -- it's just one way to address the problem.
Reduce the Risk from Your Oral Bacteria
Cysteine is a non-essential amino acid that is commonplace in several foods. It's also been shown to prevent carcinogens from forming in its immediate environment -- so a regular mouthwash with a drop of cysteine in it could, in theory, reduce the cancer risk without actually doing anything else to improve your oral health. Of course, that seems kind of silly when you could just...
Reduce the Presence of Negative Bacteria in Your Mouth
And the way to do that is stuff you should already be doing every day -- brush, floss, use mouthwash, avoid sugary foods, eat a healthy diet, get decent exercise and get plenty of rest. It's amazing how much just taking care of yourself can keep you well taken care of.
Sunday, October 21, 2012
The Theory: How Oral Disease Might Cause Cancer
Science doesn't know how oral disease is related to cancer. But we've seen enough math over the past decade or so of study to know that there's definitely something going on in your mouth that can make you vulnerable to cancer -- even decades later. We're going to lay out the most commonly-accepted theory for you.
The Inflammation Theory
The mouth is a place of almost constant microscopic injuries. For example, something as simple as eating popcorn can cause hundreds of tiny scrapes and cuts on the gums and roof of the mouth. Furthermore, the inside of the mouth is naturally home to hundreds of kinds of bacteria and microbes -- some of which the body considers hostile. When those hostile microbes get into those tiny injuries, it causes a low-grade infection that can literally last for years if you keep re-scraping up the inside of your mouth.
That infection, in turn, leads to a constant low-grade inflammation. Inflamed cells don't respond as well to normal inter-cellular chemical signals, including the signal that tells the cell to die if it starts to act abnormally. If something unusual happens to a cell that causes it to act like a cancer cell, and then the normal self-protection message fails to kill the cell, it can become cancerous. Thus, oral bacteria act as an enabler of carcinogenesis.
The major flaw in this theory is that it doesn't explain why one of the inflamed cells may start to act like a cancer cell. It assumes that, essentially, cells in your body are constantly 'going rogue', starting to act like cancer cells, and then getting killed by your own body. Interestingly, this is another commonly-accepted theory about how cancer works, but when you build one theory on top of another unproven theory, you have to take the whole thing with several grains of salt.
That doesn't mean that there's a flaw in the math -- there's definitely a relationship between oral disease and cancer -- it just means we don't know exactly why.
The Inflammation Theory
The mouth is a place of almost constant microscopic injuries. For example, something as simple as eating popcorn can cause hundreds of tiny scrapes and cuts on the gums and roof of the mouth. Furthermore, the inside of the mouth is naturally home to hundreds of kinds of bacteria and microbes -- some of which the body considers hostile. When those hostile microbes get into those tiny injuries, it causes a low-grade infection that can literally last for years if you keep re-scraping up the inside of your mouth.
That infection, in turn, leads to a constant low-grade inflammation. Inflamed cells don't respond as well to normal inter-cellular chemical signals, including the signal that tells the cell to die if it starts to act abnormally. If something unusual happens to a cell that causes it to act like a cancer cell, and then the normal self-protection message fails to kill the cell, it can become cancerous. Thus, oral bacteria act as an enabler of carcinogenesis.
The major flaw in this theory is that it doesn't explain why one of the inflamed cells may start to act like a cancer cell. It assumes that, essentially, cells in your body are constantly 'going rogue', starting to act like cancer cells, and then getting killed by your own body. Interestingly, this is another commonly-accepted theory about how cancer works, but when you build one theory on top of another unproven theory, you have to take the whole thing with several grains of salt.
That doesn't mean that there's a flaw in the math -- there's definitely a relationship between oral disease and cancer -- it just means we don't know exactly why.
Monday, October 15, 2012
Getting Into the Data: In Depth On Oral Bacteria and Cancer
Last week we put up several links to studies that show a pretty clear link between oral bacteria and cancer. We couldn't help but think that perhaps it would be helpful to some of you if we translated at least one of them from scientific jargon into layman's English. From The Journal of Oral Microbiology:
Why is this considered just as relevant as age and gender? Because it's statistically correlated to an extraordinary degree; if you had periodontal disease when your first molars came out, you were much more likely to get breast cancer. It’s not quite the difference between getting breast cancer as a man and getting breast cancer as a woman, but close to the difference between getting it as a 25 year old and getting it as a 35 year old.
"Inflammation caused by infections may be the most important preventable cause of cancer in general. However, in the oral cavity the role of microbiota in carcinogenesis is not known. Microbial populations on mouth mucosa differ between healthy and malignant sites and certain oral bacterial species have been linked with malignancies but the evidence is still weak in this respect. Nevertheless, oral microorganisms inevitably up-regulate cytokines and other inflammatory mediators that affect the complex metabolic pathways and may thus be involved in carcinogenesis. Poor oral health associates statistically with prevalence of many types of cancer, such as pancreatic and gastrointestinal cancer."What this says, in short, is that many cancers are indirectly caused by infections -- indirectly because it's not the infection itself that causes the cancer, but instead the inflammation caused when your body fights the infection. In addition, this is inflammation that certain bacteria in your mouth can make much, much worse. We haven't figured out exactly how these bacteria cause cancer, so we can't say for certain that they do -- but the statistical correlation between oral health and cancer risk is quite significant.
"Our unpublished results from a cohort study in Sweden with 16 years of follow-up showed that age, female gender, and periodontitis with loss of the first mandibular molars were the principal independent predictors of cancers in general, and breast cancer in particular, as registered in the Swedish Cancer Registry. From the same database, premature death of young individuals was observed to link statistically with periodontitis and missing molars whether the cause of death was because of cancer, cardiovascular, or gastrointestinal disease."This is the quote we referred to in this months' newsletter. Translated, it says that there are three factors that are the most correlated with breast cancer. The first is the age of the person. The second is their gender. The third is whether or not they had periodontal disease when their first molars were removed.
Why is this considered just as relevant as age and gender? Because it's statistically correlated to an extraordinary degree; if you had periodontal disease when your first molars came out, you were much more likely to get breast cancer. It’s not quite the difference between getting breast cancer as a man and getting breast cancer as a woman, but close to the difference between getting it as a 25 year old and getting it as a 35 year old.
Thursday, October 11, 2012
The Hard Science of Soft Sciences
Here at Drs. Eric Johnson and Tom Risbrudt's office, we spend a small but significant portion of our time keeping up on the latest in dental research, from the cutting-edge (no pun intended) pharyngeal surgeries out of Switzerland to the UC Berkeley medical students pumping out research papers about the effects of non-fluoride toothpaste. As mentioned last month, one of the things we see more and more is that there really isn't a distinction between oral health and general health. If your mouth is unhealthy, your body will be too, and vice versa.
But there's a kind of problem with biological sciences. They're referred to by some as 'soft' sciences, because there are just so many variables involved with any form of life that two seemingly identically sets of circumstances can come up with radically different results (ask the scientists studying which diets are best for fat loss!) So a single study that says 'oral bacteria are linked to increased pancreatic cancer risk' is interesting, but until four or five other groups have come up with studies saying the same thing, that's all it is -- interesting.
As it happens, however, the link between breast cancer and oral health isn't just a one-off event. It's been shown in several studies from all over the world:
That feels pretty darn good.
But there's a kind of problem with biological sciences. They're referred to by some as 'soft' sciences, because there are just so many variables involved with any form of life that two seemingly identically sets of circumstances can come up with radically different results (ask the scientists studying which diets are best for fat loss!) So a single study that says 'oral bacteria are linked to increased pancreatic cancer risk' is interesting, but until four or five other groups have come up with studies saying the same thing, that's all it is -- interesting.
As it happens, however, the link between breast cancer and oral health isn't just a one-off event. It's been shown in several studies from all over the world:
- The Journal of Oral Microbiology
- Medical News Today
- The Journal of Translational Medicine
- Journal Portal of Shahid Beheshti Medical University
That feels pretty darn good.
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