We spoke to Claire Louise, a UK based multi award winning Oral Health Expert, who gave us a professional insight into what we needed to know about why a postbiotic supplement might help support a healthy mouth.
You may be asking, what is a microbiome? And how might a postbiotic supplement protect it?
Well, you’ve no doubt heard of the gut microbiome - it’s hard to escape hearing about it with it being a such hot topic in the media! In very simple terms, a microbiome is a complex ‘soup’ of bacteria that occupy the gut & can help with all sorts of things needed to keep your body ticking along nicely. There’s a balance of bacteria that is healthy but if you disrupt the fragile balance of the good with the bad bacteria in the gut, it can cause you all sorts of problems. These problems can range from hormone issues, depression, to immune issues or disease. When the balance is right it is healthy, & so it keeps the body healthy.
The mouth is the similar. From the moment we are born we develop a unique mix of bacteria that work in harmony to keep our mouths healthy. In a similar situation to the gut microbiome, if we upset this delicate balance of bacteria in the mouth, we can suffer the consequences in the form of things like gum disease & tooth decay. It’s important we manage this microbiome & prioritise protecting this balance of bacteria to maintain a healthy, disease-free mouth.
As our ability to understand the body develops, so does the methods in which we learn how to look after our body. Medicine is changing & we are becoming more proactive by preventing disease instead of being reactive to it, because often by then it’s too late. As science gives us more answers & advances in medicine changes, so too is dentistry.
As an industry, we are starting to move away from the old fashioned concept that we have to just kill or remove bacteria. Not all bacteria is bad. Some of the good bacteria can actually help control & prevent bad bacteria from causing us issues. We know this to be true for the gut and now we know it to be true for the mouth.
We want to protect a healthy microbiome, not kill bacteria. We need to keep a healthy balance of good & bad bacteria. It’s when this balance tips towards an abundance of bad bacteria (dysbiosis), that disease occurs.
So, how do we do this? By keeping our mouth clean, using the right tools & techniques at home, regularly visiting your hygienist who will professionally manage microflora/biofilm, prevent the growth of bad bacteria using postbiotics, adjusting a diet that feeds the growth of the bad bacteria & absolutely NOT obliterating all bacteria with harsh mouthwashes.
By regularly using postbiotics supplements to manage a healthy microbiome, we can prevent the disease causing bacteria from being able to grow on sites in the mouth & ultimately this can prevent them from initiating the damage associated with decay & gum disease.
Further to this, managing a healthy oral microbiome reduces certain strains of bacteria from producing volatile sulphur compounds (VSCs), which are the compounds released by some bacteria that causes bad breath. So by taking daily postbiotic supplements we can also prevent socially unacceptable issues like halitosis, giving us another important reason to protect the bacteria in our mouths.
I’m an Oral Health Expert and for a while now I have seen myself & my colleagues starting to move away from advice that simply just kills all bacteria. Holistic methods to protect the whole microbiome is how things are moving. Preventing disease, not reacting to it. Thinking about the bigger picture, seeing patients regularly for professional prophylaxis, keeping up with science & working alongside patients to manage their health.