Dental Hygiene and Alternative Medicines

Many of the schools of medicine discussed in in our class so far have dealt with treating the whole person. Not just through use of medication or treating symptoms, but changing their lifestyle and diet to improve their overall health and allow the body to heal itself. These practices not only apply to treatment of the already sick, but can be practiced as effective preventative measures. As a Dental Hygienist, a major function of the profession is to eliminate the contributing factors and risk factors in a patient that may lead to oral and sometimes systemic disease. It also seems to be a major focus for systems such as Ayurveda, Naturopathic, and, to some degree, Traditional Chinese medicines.

The focus of these medical traditions that most relates to Dental Hygiene practice is bringing the body to optimum health through lifestyle and diet change. Dental Hygiene has a largely preventative approach. Once cavities happen, they cannot be healed by the body. The cells that produce the enamel covering the visible tooth are lost during its eruption. Therefore the only way to treat the disease is to prevent it, through limiting consumption of fermentable carbohydrates, and practicing proper hygiene home care.

Keeping the patients systemically healthy may reduce the amount of damage that can happen to a patient’s oral soft tissue and the structures supporting the teeth. Anything that may help optimize immune function and tissue production, such as naturopathy, will help benefit the structure around the tooth. In periodontal diseases, the immune system destroys the supporting tissues around the tooth in an attempt to contain pathogenic bacteria. This destruction can be limited the soft tissues, such as gingivitis, or produce bone lose...

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...can be uncomfortable for it often involves instrument below the gums in the pocket that surrounds the tooth. Depending on the health of the patient’s gums, state of tartar, and depth of the pockets, this can be extremely uncomfortable for some patients. In particularly bad cases, several appointments are needed to remove deposits from the entire mouth. If hypnosis was used to manage the pain and anxiety, the patient may be more apt to return to complete treatment.

All of the complementary and alternative medical practices reviewed so far can have some impact on oral health, because they all influence systemic health. The oral cavity is a window into systemic health, and to have optimum health in one you must have optimum health in the other. I think the best adjunct or complimentary practice to our current clinical practices and standards of care would be hypnosis.