The Perio Patient Podcast

Exploring ways to better manage life and chronic inflammation affecting your mouth. The thoughts and ideas of one San Antonio periodontist, Dr. Benjamin Young DDS San Antonio. I am an inquisitive guy who is fascinated by the specialty I practice. I also love dentistry, medicine, science, and the humanities, and talk and write about all of it. The reason I do this, is because I believe patients nee...

If we are not constantly working to live a purposeful life, then —I don't know about you, but — it's easy for me to just curl up and sleep a little longer.  

Our brains are like sieves -- and this is a good thing. I talk about how to focus on important things in the midst of a lot of urgent things.  The thoughts and ideas of one periodontist.

The thoughts and ideas of one periodontist Are people under stress more likely to catch a cold? Well, there was a study that attempted to answer that question back in 1991. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/1713648/  

I recorded this while on the road as I explain and I give you a few personal opinions about things involving all of us at the moment. 

There was (at least to me) an interesting research article in the December 2020 issue of the Journal of the American Dental Association (JADA) on the subject of short-term mission work by dentists and how these activities affect those who participate.  I use this to describe the benefit of this type of activity to professional development in healthcare workers in general by using myself as the exa...

How is your mood? Does this Christmas season have a little dark mood to it? If so, I hope you find this podcast therapeutic. We Need a Little Christmas   performed by Angela Lansbury  and from the musical Mame. God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen performed by Pentatonix. Joy To The World (Live At The Helix In Dublin, Ireland/2013)

I go over a study that correlates flossing with keeping teeth – which correlates with better health. The study was reported in the Journal of Dental Research this year and involves patients who are over the age of 65. As a side benefit, while we work through a summary of this study, I explain a little about statistics in research. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0022034520916151?journ...

I've enrolled in a series of lectures on the topic of "Personality." A lot has changed since Myers-Briggs.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walter_E._Williams https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/09/10/what-personality-tests-really-deliver https://www.understandmyself.com https://courses.jordanbpeterson.com/library  

Happy Thanksgiving to friends in the US and around the world. It's too good a holiday not to share.

Proprioception is the brain's ability to know where all parts of the body are in space and time. It is the reason we can walk without falling and know when a strawberry seed has lodged between our teeth. Understanding proprioception can help people keep their dental implants healthy and also help them determine whether or not they are having gum pain or a toothache. 

The thoughts and ideas of one periodontist. Vitamin D is an important supplement to consider taking.  https://www.webmd.com/lung/news/20200518/more-vitamin-d-lower-risk-of-severe-covid-19 https://www.healthline.com/health/food-nutrition/benefits-vitamin-d#_noHeaderPrefixedContent

We know it as HIPAA which really doesn't help me that much because I then think it spells out HIPPA. Of course, when we can't spell it, it then becomes difficult to figure out what it stands for. I share two recent HIPAA violations in order to help us understand what it is meant to protect. The first article I share talks about a breach of the information of an insurance company by hackers that ul...

The thoughts and ideas of one periodontist. The article referred to can be found at https://dryoungperiodontics.com/how-to-get-straight-as-in-college/

So is it Veterans' Day or Veterans Day? Here's your answer. Thank you to all who have served our Nation in the military.

If you are a perfectionist, you need to listen to this -- perhaps over and over -- until it makes "perfect" sense.  Daily habits are more important than what we attempt to do to manage life every once in a while. Routines should be simple and low stress. To get to this level of management is not easy and takes time. Am I there personally? No way. It's one of life's constant challenges.

If you want to get the most out of your dental insurance it will require changing your mind about who is best suited to handle communicating with the insurance company. Most patients defer all of this complicated insurance stuff to the dental office. Rather than do this, why not use the dental office as a source of information to equip you to deal with your insurance company? Of all the players, y...

The thoughts and ideas of one periodontist. The best healthcare comes to those who assume responsibility for participating rather than expecting things to workout. So much really depends on the patient's attitude as to whether or not they will be able to achieve and then maintain a good quality of life and health. 

Here I get into the differences in the pain that comes from within a tooth and the pain associated with the area around the tooth. 

If we are to follow the science, then let's look at some of the numbers and see what we can understand that may not be clear from what we are hearing from all the sound bites.

The thoughts and ideas of one periodontist. Let's take a brief trip down Memory Lane.

The thoughts and ideas of one periodontist. This is a brief update and I talk a little about Vitamin D. More to come from the information I picked up at this meeting as i go back through it in the upcoming weeks.   

We are continuing our tour through the teeth. In an earlier podcast I went through the different front teeth for adults and children. In this episode we get into the bicuspids and molars. Finally, how do all the teeth function together? I explain why you need them all (except for wisdom teeth).

The thoughts and ideas of one periodontist. Should everyone everywhere where Face Masks in order to keep the virus from infecting people? Let's get practical and think this issue through. https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/coronavirus/in-depth/coronavirus-mask/art-20485449

Today, let's think about viruses because it's on our minds. It worries a lot of people and rightly so – but we will get through this. COVID-19 is like other cold and flu or influenza viruses in many ways. It isn't even unique in that people don't die from these other viruses. They do. What is new is that it is new. This means we as a population do not have a built-up immunity to it just yet. We wi...