And the Research That Proves It I’d like you to sit with this scenario. You have a patient, let’s call her a cross between dozens of patients I’ve seen over the years. She is in her mid-fifties. She brushes twice a day, flosses daily, and visits every six months. Nonetheless, her periodontal condition worsens. The […]

Headline: Meet the corkscrew bacterium that swims into your gums and brings its own demolition enzymes Most of the bacteria we talk about sit on a surface — on the tooth, on the tissue, in the biofilm. Treponema denticola is different, and understanding why changes how you think about a deep pocket. Td is a […]

Sixteen years as a Registered Dental Hygienist  and I’ve said the sentence a thousand times: “gum disease is linked to heart disease.” True — but linked is a weak word, and patients can smell it. So let me start this whole series by replacing the vague link with the actual machine, and introducing the enemy-in-chief: […]

What GLP-1 medications are doing to saliva, enamel, and gum tissue — and the exact protocol I build inside practices to stay ahead of it Part 2 of The GLP-1 Series. Written for both sides of the operatory: the clinician holding the explorer, and the patient in the chair who was never warned. Picture a […]

The new high-risk patient is already in your chair. She doesn’t look like anyone we were trained to catch. Part 1 of a four-part series on GLP-1 medications and the mouth. Written for dental professionals. Before we start: I am a dental hygienist (RDH, MPH) and a functional nutritionist. I am not a physician, and […]

For decades we treated the mouth like it ended at the gumline. Bleeding gums were a brushing problem. A cavity was a sugar problem. Dry mouth was an annoyance you pushed through with a glass of water. Clean better, we said, and the mouth will behave. Modern science has dismantled that model completely. The mouth […]

Amber Auger, MPH, RDH, presents a case study on scaling and root planing with glycine-based air polishing. Article originally published on RDHMag There’s been a shift from traditional rubber cup polishing to air polishing technology. This is due not only to time management, patient comfort, and stain removal, but also to the evidence-based research on […]

It’s not a probing problem. It’s a permission problem. There’s a number I can predict about almost any practice before I walk in the door: the perio diagnosis rate. Industry-wide it hovers around 8%. Periodontal disease, depending on the study, affects somewhere north of 40% of adults — closer to 70% once you’re past 65. […]

A Recap of my 6 Months in My Functional Nutrition Certification Program Article originally published on Linkedin As dental professionals, we’ve all seen firsthand how hormones influence our patients’ oral health, inflammation, bone density, tissue resilience, and even biofilm patterns shift throughout different life stages. But when it comes to perimenopause and menopause, the biochemical […]

When you are emotionally and physically exhausted from dentistry, you have one option- survival. Survival and leadership can’t work at the same time. It’s like trying to remove calculus without water in a power instrument. It’s impossible. When you are in survival, you can often see the problems but feel so overwhelmed by even the […]