A viewer asks: “The International Academy of Oral Medicine and Toxicology aim to reduce the use of toxic substances in dentistry. They advocate using composite resins or ceramic fillings (instead of mercury amalgam), zirconia and porcelain (for crowns, bridges, and fillings), to minimize inflammation, toxicity, and immune system reactions, ozone therapy (to treat tooth decay, periodontal disease, and other oral infections) and herbal mouthwashes or natural antimicrobials to support oral detox. To what extent are their recommendations safe and effective alternatives to conventional dental practices? How strong is their claim of a relationship between oral health and overall health, especially heart disease?”

This is a positive trend, after many, many decades of a kind of wretched excess, where toxic materials were employed again and again for fillings and implants, not to mention prevention of caries with things like fluoride which is a known neurotoxin. So, too, the raising of questions about a link between oral health and health conditions in other locations of the body is an intuitive awareness that is growing to recognize a microbial liability in people with poor oral hygiene or frank gum disease, despite their best efforts to contain it. So this is simply reacting to a trend promoted via the literature, to be a current talking point. This is how things progress. So it is moving in a positive direction. What is needed now is for there to be more serious attention paid to the role of viruses in oral health problems and the body-wide consequences of having a concentrated chronic viral presence in the oral cavity providing a vector for spreading elsewhere, to cause more serious health compromise.