The Exceptional Practice, following the wellness model rather than the sickness model, places the emphasis on staying well rather than repeatedly getting well, and therefore our patient’s total health is our ongoing concern. Indeed the dentist has more regular contact with the patient than the physician, and can have more effect on health.

Every time the dentist performs surgery he/she is dependent on the patients own immune system for healing, this is a function of factors involving nutrition and life style. The doctor doesn’t heal – the immune system does.

Patients presenting with oral diseases are often deficient in key vitamins and minerals, to cure the disease you must attack the cause.

Long term treatments such as periodontal therapy and orthodontics constantly add repeated insult to injury placing great stress on the body’s ability to heal.

While the medical profession has been attacked for little training in nutrition, the fact is that new research is appearing at such rapid rates that anything you knew ten years ago is probably obsolete. We have therefore embarked on a completely documented nutritional course of study that will answer the question:

What role can and should the dentist play in the nutritional health of the dental patient? We shall examine the topics of study one at a time. You may print any of these files using Adobe Acrobat Reader. The goal of this presentation is to state the issues and ask the questions that we will need to answer. We will need to decide:

1. What do we believe is true?
2. What would we recommend to our patients?
3. How would this affect our service to our patients.