If Alzheimer’s runs in your family, read this…

The dentist you choose is shaping your destiny. This is Part 2 of 8. Today, we talk about your brain.

Remember our two people from last week? Both the same age, same genes, same diet, one who picked a whole-body dentist and one who picked a drill-and-fill? 

Last week, we tracked that single decision’s impact on their heart health throughout a lifetime.

Today I want to follow our two patients somewhere that frightens most of us more: the brain. And I’ll tell you why I take this one personally.

My mom had Alzheimer’s. My dad had ALS with dementia. So when the research started connecting gum disease to the brain, I didn’t read it so much as a dentist as I did as a son.

In 2019, a study in Science Advances found a specific gum-disease bacterium (Porphyromonas gingivalis, the main troublemaker behind periodontitis) in the brain tissue of people who had died with Alzheimer’s. Researchers established a critical pathway where oral bacteria migrate to the brain and drive neurodegeneration.

Now, the obvious objection: maybe people slipping into dementia simply stop brushing and flossing, and the bacteria move in after. It’s a fair question. But the research keeps pointing the other way. In that same line of work, the toxic enzymes P. gingivalis leaves behind (called gingipains) showed up in brains before a diagnosis, tracking with the damage rather than following it. And when researchers gave the bacteria to healthy mice, the mice developed the same brain changes. So, the bacteria appear to help start the neurodengeration, according to the evidence.

Which brings us back to our two people. Gum disease is slow and painless; you can carry it for years and feel nothing. The drill-and-fill dentist says little as long as the teeth are intact. The whole-body dentist catches the inflammation early and treats it like it matters — because for the brain, it just might. (I went deeper on this in my piece on the gum disease–Alzheimer’s link.)

So if Alzheimer’s runs in your family, the way it does in mine, treat your gums as part of your brain care.

Don’t wait for them to bleed. Ask your dentist, plainly, whether you have any gum inflammation, and take it seriously if you do.

Healthy gums are one of the few levers in the whole Alzheimer’s conversation that you can act on starting tonight.

A different dentist can mean a different destiny.

Next week: the two-way street between your gums and your blood sugar and the question your dentist should be asking you but almost certainly isn’t.

-Dr. B

P.S. One of the #1 questions I get from you all is what I use in my own oral care routine, so here they are:

• this rinse in place of mouthwash, twice a day
• this toothpaste twice a day
• this tongue scraper once a day
• this green tea every day (great for inflammation and cavity prevention)
• this magnesium 500mg 1-2 hours before bed