Halitosis is no laughing matter. Bad breath can be the result of a range of problems, from the need for a good cleaning to systemic illnesses like acid reflux or diabetes. Nissha USA’s OralChroma is designed to help dentists identify those causes so effective treatment can begin, restoring fresh breath as well as good health.

“The OralChroma is a gas chromatograph. The only one of its kind currently available in the marketplace,” said Val Di Giovanni, P.Eng., who has been in the gas sensor industry for more than 25 years and is now the technical consultant of Nissha USA. “It will take a breath sample and analyze it and tell you what levels of the 3 major components of halitosis exist in that breath sample.”

Patients simply blow into a small, disposable syringe. The dental professional then inserts the syringe into the OralChroma, which analyzes the air sample. Within 4 minutes, the OralChroma measures the levels of those halitosis components in the sample. It then sends its findings to a computer that runs the associated data management software and presents the results.

The first component, hydrogen sulfide, is directly related to oral hygiene. Patients who haven’t been brushing or flossing, or those who haven’t had a recent cleaning or scaling, may see a buildup of organic debris on the dorsum of the tongue, producing the bad breath.

Methyl mercaptan, the second component, is associated with the bacteria that cause periodontitis, gingivitis, pockets, and cavities. The third component, dimethyl sulfide, is blood borne and comes from elsewhere in the system, possibly resulting from digestive issues, liver or kidney disease, or even cancer.

“Once you know the levels of these gases, then the professional involved—whether it’s a hygienist, a dentist, or even a medical doctor with the dimethyl sulfide—uses their experience to treat it,” said Di Giovanni.

A high level of hydrogen sulfide, for example, would prompt the hygienist to initiate a verbal examination of the patient’s diet, followed by an inspection of the mouth to see if cleaning is necessary. After a large methyl mercaptan reading, the dentist would perform an exam to find the infection causing the odor. High levels of dimethyl sulfide may require a referral to the patient’s primary care physician.

Once the source of the odor has been determined, the dental personnel would devise and execute a treatment plan. The OralChroma’s software then monitors the ongoing treatment, maintaining records of the readings from each dental visit and then charting them over time.

Read more via Desktop Device Diagnoses What Causes Bad Breath | Dentistry Today

Cutting out unnecessary expenses in a dental practice is a critical component of becoming more profitable. Fortunately, practice owners can take 8 easy steps to improve their bottom line.

1. Add motion detectors in examination and storage rooms. Using motion detectors to operate lights and certain types of equipment in examination or storage rooms can greatly reduce energy costs for the practice.
2. Invest in a waterless vacuum system. Consider investing in a dry or waterless vacuum system, as it can help decrease daily water usage by 300 to 500 gallons. When it comes to cutting costs, a lower monthly water bill can have a tremendous impact on the overall expenses for a practice.
3. Replace any halogen light bulbs with LED light bulbs. Replacing halogen light bulbs in the practice with LED bulbs can reduce energy usage by up to 75%. LED bulbs also have a longer lifespan than halogen bulbs, making them a more valuable investment for any practice.
4. Purchase a washer and dryer for the practice. Many dental offices still send their scrubs to the dry cleaner to be cleaned. Installing a washer and dryer directly in your practice can help save time and reduce both cleaning and uniform costs in the long run.
5. Invest in management software. Consider implementing dental management software such as DAISYfrom Dentists Management to help reduce administrative costs and increase the overall efficiency of the practice. DAISY, for example, is able to organize and manage electronic billing, prescriptions, claims, patient recall, and more.
6. Look for a cheaper supplier. It is important for dental practices to frequently evaluate the current value of their supplier contracts. By doing so, practices could discover an alternate supplier that provides items such as impression trays and hygiene instruments of similar quality at lower prices. They could even use this information as leverage to negotiate a better contract with their current supplier.
7. Use reusable patient barriers. Consider using reusable sterilization pouches and patient barriers rather than the disposable alternative. Eco-friendly choices don’t sacrifice on sterilization standards and can lower costs.
8. Perform collection claim risk-benefit analysis. Sometimes a malpractice claim arises when dentists pursue collection claims, so try to perform a risk-benefit analysis before each collection attempt. If a patient files a malpractice claim, it can sometimes cost the practice more than the original collection would have been.

Read more via 8 Ways to Reduce Expenses in a Dental Practice | Dentistry Today

Global sugar consumption costs the world approximately $172 billion in dental treatment, according to Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg (MLU) and the Biotechnology Research and Information Network AG (BRAIN AG). In Germany alone, sugar consumption cost about $23 billion in dental treatment.

The researchers evaluated representative data on the prevalence of caries, inflammation of the gums, and tooth loss, corresponding costs of treatment and the disease burden, and sugar consumption in 168 countries for 2010. Next, they calculated the share of total costs attributable to sugar, including white household sugar and the “hidden” sugar in processed foods such as soft drinks, ketchup, ice cream, frozen foods, breads, cakes, and pastries.

“The data shows a clear correlation between the consumption of sugar and the incidence of caries, periodontitis, and, as a result, tooth loss,” said Dr. Toni Meier of the MLU and lead author of the study. “For every additional 25 grams of sugar consumed per person and day, which amounts to roughly 8 sugar cubes or a glass of sweetened lemonade, the costs of dental treatment in high-income countries increase on average by $100 per person and year.”

Read more via Sugar Consumption Costs the World $172 Billion in Dental Care | Dentistry Today

By Marcy Nicholson and Zandi Shabalala
NEW YORK/JOHANNESBURG, Aug 11 (Reuters) –

* U.S. July consumer prices rise less than expected
* Platinum hits five-month high
* Silver on track for biggest weekly gain since Gold prices
climbed to two-month highs on Friday, rising for the fourth
straight day as investors sought refuge amid escalating tensions
between North Korea and the United States, while bullion also
received support from weak U.S. inflation data.
U.S. President Donald Trump issued a new threat to North
Korea on Friday, saying the U.S. military was “locked and
loaded” as Pyongyang accused him of driving the Korean Peninsula
to the brink of nuclear war and world powers expressed alarm.

Spot gold was up 0.2 percent at $1,287.91 an ounce by
2:03 p.m. EDT (1803 GMT), and set for its biggest weekly gain
since mid-April. It earlier hit $1,291.86, its highest level
since June 7.
U.S. gold futures settled up 0.3 percent at $1,294.
“There is a continuation of flight to the safe havens after
remarks on Thursday evening from Trump about North Korea,” said
Quantitative Commodity Research consultant Peter Fertig. “It’s
not very likely that these tensions will ease in the near future
so the outlook seems supportive for gold.”
Geopolitical risks can boost demand for assets considered
safe-haven investments, such as gold.
“There remains huge uncertainty as to how the current
geopolitical crisis will play out and this may support gold
prices over the coming weeks,” said Capital Economics in a
research note.
“On the other hand, if Trump’s threats prove to be nothing
more than inflammatory rhetoric – as on previous occasions – we
would not be surprised to see the gold price retreat as the
focus of investors returns to Fed tightening.”
Data on Friday showed U.S. consumer prices rose less than
expected in July, which was also supportive to gold.

read more via PRECIOUS-Gold buoyed by global tensions, U.S. inflation data

Standard dental floss is generally considered the most effective tool for cleaning the tight spaces between the teeth. You can also use dental floss to scrape up and down the sides of each tooth.

A water pick (oral irrigator) is a device that aims a stream of water at your teeth. A water pick can help remove food particles from your teeth and might help reduce bleeding and gum disease — but it isn’t generally considered a substitute for brushing and flossing.

If plain dental floss gets stuck in your teeth, use the waxed variety. If you have a hard time handling dental floss, try a floss holder. Other options might include special brushes, picks or sticks designed to clean between the teeth.

via Dental floss vs. water pick: Which is better? – Mayo Clinic

To combat antimicrobial resistance, physicians typically tell patients to complete their full courses of antibiotic treatment. Yet a team of researchers in the United Kingdom not only says that there is no evidence that this approach is helpful, but that it may even make things worse and that patients should stop taking these medications once they feel better.

As physicians and medical organizations such as the Royal College of General Practitioners continue to debate if full or abbreviated treatment is better for preventing resistance, the Faculty of General Dental Practice in the UK (FGDP(UK)) says that nothing should change for dentists, who often prescribe short courses of antibiotics anyway.

“This will be nothing new for dentists. Our advice since publishing the first edition of our guidance in 2001, and in line with the British National Formulary and scientific evidence, has always been that courses of antibiotics should not be unduly prolonged because they encourage resistance and may lead to side effects,” said Nikolaus Palmer, BDS, PhD, editor of the FGDP(UK)’s Antimicrobial Prescribing for General Dental Practitioners.

Read more via Dentists Advised to Stay the Course in Antibiotics Debate | Dentistry Today

Last Thursday, the House’s Subcommittee on Health passed the Action for Dental Health Act of 2017. Written by Rep. Robin Kelly (D-IL), HR 2422 would reauthorize Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) oral health promotion and disease prevention programs, along with Health Resources and Services Administrationgrants to states to support oral health workforce activities. The bill passed the subcommittee as amended by voice vote with bipartisan support. Funding will total $18 million a year for each fiscal year, 2018 through 2022. Next, it will be heard before the full House Committee on Energy and Commerce.

“This bill would take several steps to support and improve dental health for some of our most vulnerable populations, including children and the elderly,” said Chairman Michael C. Burgess, MD (R-TX). “As a provider who spent much of his 3 decades in practice caring for vulnerable populations, I have the utmost respect for other providers who go out of their way to help those who cannot always help themselves.”

According to the bill, more than 181 million Americans don’t see a dentist even though nearly half of those older than the age of 30 years have some form of gum disease and nearly one in 4 children younger than the age of 5 years already have cavities. Also, dentists provide about $2.6 billion in free and discounted care each year to those most in need. Plus, emergency room charges for dental complaints totaled $2.1 billion in 2010, though nearly 80% of them were not urgent and could have been resolved in a dentist’s office. The bill noted the special dental needs of seniors and how dentists and other medical professionals should collaborate for better care as well.

With the bill, the CDC may award grants to or enter into contracts with eligible entities to obtain portable or mobile dental equipment and pay for appropriate operational costs for the provision of free dental services to underserved populations in accordance with state licensing laws. The CDC also may award grants or enter into contracts with eligible entities to improve oral health education and dental disease prevention, improve access to dental services via outreach programs to establish dental homes, reduce barriers to the provision of dental services, reduce the use of emergency departments for dental care, and facilitate the provision of dental care to nursing home residents.

via Congressional Subcommittee Passes Dental Legislation | Dentistry Today

hen in the Course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security. — Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.

He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.

He has forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his Assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.

He has refused to pass other Laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of Representation in the Legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only.

He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their Public Records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.

He has dissolved Representative Houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people.

He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected, whereby the Legislative Powers, incapable of Annihilation, have returned to the People at large for their exercise; the State remaining in the mean time exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within.

He has endeavoured to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither, and raising the conditions of new Appropriations of Lands.

He has obstructed the Administration of Justice by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary Powers.

He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.

He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harass our people and eat out their substance.

He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures.

He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil Power.

He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation:

For quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:

For protecting them, by a mock Trial from punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States:

For cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world:

For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent:

For depriving us in many cases, of the benefit of Trial by Jury:

For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences:

For abolishing the free System of English Laws in a neighbouring Province, establishing therein an Arbitrary government, and enlarging its Boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule into these Colonies

For taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments:

For suspending our own Legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.

He has abdicated Government here, by declaring us out of his Protection and waging War against us.

He has plundered our seas, ravaged our coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.

He is at this time transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to compleat the works of death, desolation, and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of Cruelty & Perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the Head of a civilized nation.

He has constrained our fellow Citizens taken Captive on the high Seas to bear Arms against their Country, to become the executioners of their friends and Brethren, or to fall themselves by their Hands.

He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.

In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A Prince, whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.

Nor have We been wanting in attentions to our British brethren. We have warned them from time to time of attempts by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here. We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations, which would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence. They too have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our Separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, Enemies in War, in Peace Friends.

We, therefore, the Representatives of the united States of America, in General Congress, Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by Authority of the good People of these Colonies, solemnly publish and declare, That these united Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States, that they are Absolved from all Allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as Free and Independent States, they have full Power to levy War, conclude Peace, contract Alliances, establish Commerce, and to do all other Acts and Things which Independent States may of right do. — And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes, and our sacred Honor.

New Hampshire:
Josiah Bartlett, William Whipple, Matthew Thornton

Massachusetts:
John Hancock, Samuel Adams, John Adams, Robert Treat Paine, Elbridge Gerry

Rhode Island:
Stephen Hopkins, William Ellery

Connecticut:
Roger Sherman, Samuel Huntington, William Williams, Oliver Wolcott

New York:
William Floyd, Philip Livingston, Francis Lewis, Lewis Morris

New Jersey:
Richard Stockton, John Witherspoon, Francis Hopkinson, John Hart, Abraham Clark

Pennsylvania:
Robert Morris, Benjamin Rush, Benjamin Franklin, John Morton, George Clymer, James Smith, George Taylor, James Wilson, George Ross

Delaware:
Caesar Rodney, George Read, Thomas McKean

Maryland:
Samuel Chase, William Paca, Thomas Stone, Charles Carroll of Carrollton

Virginia:
George Wythe, Richard Henry Lee, Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Harrison, Thomas Nelson, Jr., Francis Lightfoot Lee, Carter Braxton

North Carolina:
William Hooper, Joseph Hewes, John Penn

South Carolina:
Edward Rutledge, Thomas Heyward, Jr., Thomas Lynch, Jr., Arthur Middleton

Georgia:
Button Gwinnett, Lyman Hall, George Walton

photo courtesy of jobbiecrew.com

So strong is the belief in the growth momentum of the global economy as it enters the second half of 2017, the point has been reached in the economic cycle where data not meeting expectations is dismissed as an aberration.Flash purchasing managers’ indexes for services in Europe in June, for example, were weaker than anyone in a Reuters poll had predicted, but the market paid scant attention. “Way below expectations, but let’s not worry,” was the mantra.

Read more via All well for world economy at mid-year? Up to a point | Reuters

Want to avoid cavities? Brushing twice a day with toothpaste, flossing once a day, and limiting sugary snacks and beverages is how you do it. It’s simple but sometimes life gets busy and you might be tempted to skip it. Don’t. A bright smile makes you feel good inside and out. Make sure to see your dentist regularly, too.

Some things to protect your smile

Sealants

Dental sealants are a type of special plastic coating that act as a barrier, protecting cavity-prone areas. They are usually applied to the chewing surfaces of back teeth and are sometimes used to cover deep pits and grooves in other teeth. Sealing a tooth is fast and easy. As long as the sealant remains intact, the tooth surface will be protected from decay. Sealants hold up well under the force of normal chewing but sometimes a reapplication is needed. Talk to your dentist about sealants. Remember: Just because you have sealants doesn’t mean you don’t have to brush and floss every day. Sealants are added protection against decay!

Read more via Healthy Dental Habits for Preteens – American Dental Association