Featuring Expert Guest: Megan Barnett, MS, CNS
As frontline providers in oral health, RDHs play a critical role in recognizing systemic factors that influence periodontal outcomes. This course dives into the science behind the gut–oral axis and how dietary fiber impacts microbiome balance, inflammation, and overall health.
We’ll examine how fiber-driven short-chain fatty acids (SCFAs) support immune regulation and barrier integrity, reducing systemic inflammatory burden that can exacerbate periodontal disease. Attendees will learn practical strategies to integrate nutrition-focused conversations into periodontal therapy, including evidence-based fiber recommendations, patient-friendly food examples, and motivational interviewing techniques to improve compliance. By connecting oral biofilm management with gut health principles, RDHs will leave equipped to elevate patient care, enhance treatment outcomes, and position themselves as whole-health advocates in the dental setting.
Perio Tray™ therapy from Perio Protect delivers medication deep below the gums so that the medication can fight infections causing the host inflammatory response. The seal on the tray is the key to deep delivery.
The primary antimicrobial used in Perio Tray™ delivery is Perio Gel™ with 1.7% hydrogen peroxide. This effective, broad-spectrum antimicrobial decreases our reliance on antibiotics and has the added benefits of freshening breath and whitening teeth. Patients love these benefits.
Perio Tray™ therapy is offered most often to patients with gingivitis or periodontitis, but it is also prescribed for patients with infected margins around restorations, with peri-implant mucositis or peri-implantitis.
Because Perio Tray™ therapy helps improve gingival health and prevent the recurrence of disease, it also extends the life of restorations, giving you optimal restorative results.
Perio Protect has the only tray delivery system with research to support these claims.
"As a periodontist, I have tried just about every method of treating periodontal disease that makes scientific sense. The key to success is long-term maintenance. Perio Protect is the one treatment that I have utilized in the last five years that works. Perio Protect is easy for patients to use, which means high compliance and high compliance means lots of success. It has become part of my winning formula."
Dr. Gordon Fraser
Conyers, GA
Reducing Oral Inflammation Improves General Health and Wellness
Periodontal disease is not just an inflammatory response to a bacterial infection that leads to tooth loss. It is a chronic inflammatory disease with multiple risk and modifying factors that prime individual patients to respond differently to polymicrobial biofilm-induced inflammation.
Perio Tray™ delivery of Perio Gel™ (1.7% hydrogen peroxide) helps better manage inflammation by suppressing pro-inflammatory gram-negative populations in the subgingival microbiome and encouraging the repopulation of healthier bacterial species. When delivered and held deep below the gums, peroxide works as a broad-spectrum antimicrobial, physically disrupting the biofilm matrix that protects biofilm communities and lysing bacterial cell walls.
Peroxide via Perio Tray™ delivery does more than just kill bacteria. Its release of oxygen – as it activates, peroxide turns into O2 + H2O – changes the microenvironment of the periodontal pocket so that healthy bacterial species repopulate at the expense of pathogenic ones. The environmental changes in the pockets thus have a direct effect on the changes in the composition of bacterial species in the microbiome.
Because periodontal diseases place a chronic low-grade burden on the immune system and exacerbate other inflammatory primed comorbidities like type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular disease, dementia, rheumatoid arthritis and others, it's important to treat at every stage.
