Maintaining the Oral Microbiome
By Kevin Luan, BDS, MS and Aniruddh Narvekar, BDS
The intimate relationship between the microbiome and the host is dynamic and influenced by many environmental factors such as diet, tobacco usage, and stress. These— along with many other aspects of modern lifestyle—influence and alter our microbiome and its respective properties that cause a shift within the body’s ecosystem from a balance of health to disease, and vice versa. The oral cavity is one of the most heavily colonized parts of the human body and, therefore, susceptible to this shift equally if not more so than other areas of the body. To counteract this shift for disease prevention, clinicians must focus on the host and its microbiome residents as one, rather than separate entities.
