Dental Hygiene

The Today’s RDH Hygienist Profile is an ongoing series that features dental hygienists who have expanded their career beyond clinical work, are putting a unique spin on dental hygiene, or have gone above and beyond as a preventive specialist. To kick off the Today’s RDH Hygienist Profile series, we interview Whitney, RDH, BS, also known as Teeth Talk Girl!...

Xylitol, the sweetener with a twist; this little 5-carbon molecule packs a punch of health benefits.  Xylitol is a natural sweetener which has properties that have been shown to prevent tooth decay, increase salivary production, and reduce the development of bacteria in the mouth.1 Research shows that five exposures to xylitol a day can significantly inhibit bacterial growth in...

What is Rheumatoid Arthritis? Commonly referred to as RA, this disease is an autoimmune disorder. The immune system mistakenly attacks the joints, thinking a bacterial or viral infection is present. When the body attacks joints, it results in inflammation of the joints and usually is bilateral, meaning if one hand hurts the other one will too. The most common joints...

It’s time to breakup with the Inferior Alveolar Nerve Block As a seasoned educator and content expert in the delivery of dental local anesthesia, I find most of my esteemed colleagues, myself included, share a profound frustration over the seemingly inadequate anesthesia delivered to achieve mandibular numbness.  In simplest terms, the provision of mandibular anesthesia has most commonly been the...

Prevotella intermedia is a species that is found in gingival crevices; it is commonly found in patients who have gingivitis, periodontal disease, and other oral infections.3 Acute necrotizing ulcerative gingivitis and juvenile gingivitis have also been found with this strand exhibited in their bacteria makeup. “The Prevotella species are small anaerobic, gram-negative rods frequently identified when the microbiome of...

I will be the first to tell you that exercise and kale are the devil. I am all about being real and giving advice that I actually take for myself. We all are busy people and taking time for ourselves is generally nonexistent. We have to get creative in the way we take care of ourselves. Everyone is different...

When was the last time you let yourself love others at work? I mean really, truly love. I mean the kind of love that songs are written about and we reserve mainly for our children and spouse? The kind of self-sacrificing, laborious love that takes effort? The kind that we stand-in-awe of and bend over backward for? Come up empty?...

The reveal of sealed documents from agricultural corporation Monsanto in March 2017 left the medical world silent. After a ruling from San Francisco Judge Vince Chhabria in a civil suit regarding the development of non-Hodgkin's lymphoma, the contents of the previously sealed documents shocked the nation.1 Later to be published in an article titled “The Monsanto Papers: Poisoning the Scientific...

Last week was an adventurous one, at best. One day I woke up with a stiff neck. Typical, nothing fancy, nothing unusual. But it wasn’t long before it quickly escalated into a seizing, debilitating neck spasm that had me down and out for days. Unlike anything I ever had experienced before, this spasm sent shocks through my body each...

Does anybody feel like insurance companies have a vague resemblance to a scamming scheme? You pay month after month for an illusory sense of security. If something should happen on the off chance the worst-case scenario does arise, there is a huge deductible. Or worse, the insurance denies your claim for a reason found in the small print on...