And the essential test no one is doing.

I was wrong. Remember in one of last summer’s newsletters I said that I believed that
dental/oral infection was a significant “underlying factor” in COVID fatalities, but that we will
never know because no one is looking. As it turns out, someone actually was! A study just
published reports that people with periodontal infection are 9 TIMES MORE LIKELY TO DIE
WHEN INFECTED WITH COVID. In other words, assuring that you are free of periodontal
infection will give you at least a 98.6+% chance of surviving COVID. Way better than the
numbers claimed for vaccination – without all the long-term questions! So, my deduction was
spot on, but thankfully a couple researchers with the same suspicion proved me wrong about
“no one looking”:)

The next obvious question is “How can you be sure your mouth is infection free?” It used to be
that whenever we dentists did a periodontal examination (you know, that measuring of the
pockets between your teeth and gums) and found no pockets over 3mm and less than 10% of
those pockets showed any signs of bleeding, we would call that healthy. Those were the
“good-old” lenient days.

Today the state-of-the-art in periodontal diagnosis has been turned completely upside down.
Although those old criteria are still somewhat relevant, the only way to know for certain that
you have no periodontal infection is to actually run a lab test to analyze the bugs in your mouth.
And currently the easiest and most accurate way to do that is with a DNA analysis of the
bacteria in your saliva. So important has this become, not just in regards to COVID but for the
prevention of heart disease and diabetes as well, that we are now recommending this test for
all of our patients regardless of their clinical impression.

Just a couple months ago I attended a two-day seminar on this very subject. One of the
instructors was a hygienist who specializes in oral-systemic health. It was interesting to hear her
describe how she, a hygienist with an extremely healthy mouth by traditional standards, finally
tested herself and discovered that she was not really as healthy as she thought she was – and
how her systemic health improved once her mouth got truly healthy!

So, next time you are in the office, don’t be surprised if we recommend that you spit in a test
tube. We just might be saving your life!

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1. https://medicalxpress.com/news/2021-02-gum-disease-linked-covid-complications.html

2. COVID has an overall fatality rate of no more than 5%, probably much less. Most fatalities are in the over
65 age group where periodontal disease is 80% prevalent. Reducing the fatality rate of 80% of 5% by 9
times would cut the fatality rate down to 1.4% (98.6% survival rate