The German Oral Health Foundation

Our drive: oral-systemic health and oral fitness

Inflammatory diseases in the oral cavity affect over 40% of the population, making it a real common ailment. Science shows that diseases such as diabetes mellitus, chronic heart disease, rheumatism and even infertility are closely related to inflammation in the oral cavity. The insidious thing about it is that it usually goes unnoticed until tooth or implant loss is imminent. 

Actively shaping change

If you ask yourself what's new in dentistry in the last ten years, few relevant things come to mind. But the time of Sleeping Beauty is over and the world of dentistry is changing at breathtaking speed!

You don't notice anything yet? Then a look across the Atlantic Ocean will help. Because what is currently developing there in the fields of artificial intelligence (AI) and analytics will permanently change dentistry as we know it. And the German Oral Health Foundation wants to play an active role in shaping this change.

Mouth-Body Connection:

Physician seeks dentist - The oral-systemic bridge building

Dentistry has never really been part of medicine. Even in the Middle Ages, people went to a barber-surgeon to have their teeth pulled, and to a barber for all physical complaints. And despite all the studies that have long since proven the connections between mouth and body, an invisible boundary line remains here.

Considering the younger generations, however, this separation will no longer work. Holistic health, tracking and self-optimization are firmly anchored in the lifestyle - and that's a good thing!

Oral-systemic health: mouth and body cannot be considered in isolation

Just as there is the gut-brain axis, there is the mouth-body axis, which we in dentistry call the oral-systemic connection or - our colleagues in the USA - the mouth-body connection.

Meanwhile, there are countless studies on numerous diseases in the fields of cardiovascular, metabolism, autoimmune diseases, fertility, etc., which prove the connection between oral and physical health.

"It has been proven that diabetes can be aggravated by untreated incipient periodontitis with clinically barely perceptible inflammatory parameters, can induce insulin resistance, or that an oral mucosa that repeatedly bleeds despite good oral hygiene can indicate incipient diabetes in patients*," says Dr. Angelika Brandl-Riedel (Chairwoman of German Dental Association e.V.).

Oral Fitness: Dentistry of the Future is Personalized, Predictive and Preventive

In the USA, "oral fitness" is a standing term in dental treatment. What is standard in the USA will also become established in this country and more than 50% of future practice revenues will be realized with preventive therapies. Dentistry, which has so far focused on post-destructive diagnostics and restoration, is gradually transforming into a personalized, predictive and secondary preventive form of therapy. This opens up entirely new perspectives for both patients and practice operators.

Our certified Oral Fitness Centers and Oral Fitness Coaches are the on-the-ground players who make oral-systemic health accessible to the general population.

Implant Safety: 30 years of inflammation-free implants - (how) is that possible ?

Until now, a 15-year service life for implants was sufficient. In the meantime, however, the average age of our implant patients has dropped to 50 years. At the same time, life expectancy has risen to over 83 years - so personalized sustainability concepts will make all the difference in implant dentistry. 

With our certified Implant Safe Centers, we help close this gap and aim to make "lifelong healthy dental implants" a reality.

The central importance of dental hygiene in the change from prophylaxis to secondary prevention

Predictive analytics and measures for secondary prevention will become much more important in the future, which will also serve the prevention and treatment of general diseases. In this context, prophylaxis will become the control center in modern practice.

To meet the need for self-optimization of the new generations of patients, all measures today must be smart, simple and trackable. 

The German Oral Health Foundation: Over ten years in the service of the common good

Already with its first initiative in 2010 - the IDI Paro - in cooperation with the Deutscher Ärzteverlag, many medical professionals could be reached. Since 2015, the DMS has also been directly addressing patients and consumers.

The initiators for the foundation were Hugo Mathys, supervisory board member of MATHYS Medical in Switzerland and Dirk-Rolf Gieselmann, board member of IMOD (Institute for Molecular Diagnostics) in Germany.

The managing director of the German Oral Health Foundation GmbH is Dirk-Rolf Gieselmann.