Don’t Floss = Die Early?
Now that I have your attention, here are the results of a recent Swedish study:

Stockholm  – Severe teeth loosening increases the risk of premature death due to cancer or cardiovascular disease according to a new Swedish study, reports said Tuesday. Researchers at Karolinska Institutet in Stockholm tracked some 3,743 randomly selected people, aged between 30 and 40, when the study began in 1985.
“Actual loss of teeth suggests a disease that has been ongoing for some 15, 20 years without being detected,” Professor Birgitta Soder, one of the study’s authors, told the Goteborgs-Posten newspaper.  During the 16-year period, 110 deaths were registered. The average age of the deceased was 47 years. The average life span for women in Sweden is 83 years and 78 years for men.  “We found a clear link between (gum disease), severe tooth loosening disease, loss of one or several molars and a tripled risk of premature death,” Soder said.
The researchers have not been able to explain the link but have a theory that a long-term inflammation during teeth loosening produces harmful  sub-stances such as cytokines that may impact the immune system. Another hypothesis was that the affected people suffered from a weakened immune system.  Some other studies have suggested a similar link between teeth loosening and a rise in cardiovascular disease.

You MUST read this!

At this stage of my lifelong dental education, it’s rare that I learn something that is a revolutionary advance beyond my information base. The office is now implementing just such an advance, and we couldn’t be more enthusiastic. Caroline, Lynn, and I attended a course on “Ozone Use in Dentistry” in late February, 2011, and returned from a long weekend in rainy California more excited than after any course in our memories.

So what’s the big deal?  Every one of you has encountered ozone in its industrial use.  It disinfects municipal water supplies, the water in hot tubs and in the Coca Cola you drink, and the air in public rest rooms.  The same ozone that can be an EPA-labeled pollutant in large quantities is extremely safe if used in a controlled environment in calibrated doses.
Where the U.S. lags behind the rest of the industrialized world is in the medical uses of ozone.  Ozone can be injected into joints to kill bacteria that may be linked to certain kinds of arthritis, and can have tremendous benefits in wound healing.  It is the safest and most potent killer of bacteria, viruses, and even prions (those annoying little things that cause Mad Cow Disease).   It even kills MRSA, a dangerous and antibiotic-resistant strain of staph infection.
The FDA has classified ozone as a “new drug.”  This severely impedes ozone use in the U.S..  This “new drug” has been in medical use since the 1850s.  Medical and dental ozone research is way ahead of the U.S. in England, Ulster (Northern Ireland), South Africa, Australia, New Zealand, Germany, Russia, and even Cuba!  And we lag behind.
I believe that I am one of only about 10 dentists in Pennsylvania  who is trained to use ozone. 

How can ozone help you?   Every day, our office waterlines are disinfected with ozonated water.  This is the most effective killer of waterline biofilm ever developed.  OK, so what is biofilm?   Biofilm is the gunk that builds up inside thin-diameter tubing. It consists of zillions of bacteria.  Did you ever look at an ice cube from your fridge’s icemaker and see a dark, almost black, spot in the ice?  That’s a piece of biofilm that has broken off from the inside of your thin copper water tubing (your icemaker wouldn’t work without water, and the water gets there through thin tubing;  the thinner the tubing, the higher percent of its insides are biofilm).    You just had a zillion bacteria in your scotch and soda!  Many of these bacteria can be relatively harmless to you unless your immune system is compromised.  Is your immune system in perfect shape?  How do you know?  Why chance it, especially if ozonated water can kill off the biofilm in dental water unit lines, which consist of very fine tubing—and lots of it?

The link between gum disease and heart disease is many times stronger than the link between high cholesterol and heart disease!  When your doctor told you to lower your cholesterol, it was definitely time to worry.  Now, for the first time, your dental team has the ability to fundamentally change the kind of bacteria in your mouth.    
Think about it:  if you added up the gum tissue lining all your teeth, you’d have a bacteria-infested area bigger than the size of your palm.  From now on, every time we’ll clean your teeth we’ll be using ozonated water in our Cavitrons;   those are the ultrasonic devices we’ve used for many years to break up bacterial plaque and tartar.  We’re using the most advanced methods available to fundamentally change the balance of germs in your mouth from good (usually  aerobic, or oxygen-loving)-and-bad (mostly anaerobic, or oxygen-hating) to almost completely good.  You get the benefits of the Cavitron PLUS the germ-killing abilities of ozone. Your daily home care helps prevent the return of anaerobic bacteria.  These dangerous bugs take about three months to rebuild in the mouth after a professional cleaning under normal circumstances. You can minimize their return with daily brushing and flossing.  Simple steps to health.

How does ozone do this?  The oxygen we breathe has two atoms of oxygen hooked together, or what is referred to as O2,  Ozone has an extra atom of oxygen, so it’s O3.
That extra atom of oxygen makes for an unstable compound;  the O3 wants to shed its extra oxygen atom and become O2 again.  So, how do anaerobic (oxygen-hating) germs react to all that extra oxygen being given off when your teeth and gums are cleaned with ozonated water?  They die, and they die in large quantities.

Ozone kills the nasty anaerobic germs, and, equally  important, it kills their waste products;  what is scientifically known as “germ-poop.”  What fills in the void when the bad germs are gone?  Good germs.  What do your coronary arteries say to that?  “Thank you from the bottom of my heart.”

Let’s sum up what we’ve shared so far.  Ozone kills bad germs and germ-poop.  There’s a strong correlation between gum disease (a contagious BACTERIAL infection) and heart disease.  So, for the first time, we have the capacity to modify what’s in your mouth to make your entire body more conducive to a state of health.  That’s why we’re so excited!  I became a dentist to help people, because my terrific-role-model childhood dentist so obviously wanted to help me and his other patients.  He lived for that, as do I.  Now, I can help people more than ever before in a way that I never dreamed could be.   I’m totally jazzed by this!

Now for the obligatory legalese.  If ozone has not received FDA approval, can it legally be used in the U.S.?  The answer is an unequivocal “YES.”  Dr. Atkins, of the famous Atkins Diet, used ozone in his medical practice.  He told his patients of the potential risks and benefits;  in other words, he received what the law calls “an informed consent.”   He was prosecuted over his use of something not approved by the FDA.  The court ruled that he had the right to use what he felt could help his patients as long as he informed them of the risks and benefits. And I have that right, too.  The court ruled that the FDA did not have the legal right to interfere in this process.
Every day, doctors prescribe drugs for what is called “off-label” use, that is, a use that has not been approved by the FDA but has been shown by research and/or experience to be potentially beneficial to the patient.  Sodium hypochlorite has been used by thousands of dentists on millions of occasions as a germ-killer during root canal treatment, and that is a perfect example of an off-label use;  the FDA has not approved sodium hypochlorite for this use, yet it is used safely every day in dental offices across the country.  It is, in fact, almost universally accepted in dentistry specifically for that use.

Medical/dental ozone use is remarkably safe. As it is used in my office, it has no significant risks, and my team and I have taken great care to make it so.

.