Your mouth runs your life
The date, the standup, the group photo, the last mile. How your mouth shows up in an ordinary day — and what to do about it.
Morning Breath, and the Second Date Nobody Prepares For
You brushed before bed. You still woke up with it. Morning breath is close to universal and has very little to do with how well you brushed — here is the eight-hour window that causes it, and the part of a routine built for it.
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More from the magazine
Dental Care on a Student Budget, Without the Guilt Spiral
Most student oral-health advice assumes a schedule and a budget students do not have. Here is the version that survives finals week — and what to do when you have not seen a dentist since you left home.
The Oral Microbiome: The System You Have Never Had a Number For
The mouth is the densest microbial community in the body outside the gut, and it is the only one most people have never measured. What a saliva panel actually shows — and what it does not.
Cavity Bacteria Are Transmissible. What That Means for Parents.
Children are not born with the bacteria that cause decay — they acquire them, most often from a caregiver. That is not a reason for guilt, and it is a genuinely useful thing to know.
Men See the Dentist Less. Here Is What That Costs.
Men are less likely to have a regular dentist, more likely to wait until something hurts, and more likely to have gum disease. Those three facts are related, and only one of them requires a chair to change.
Hormones and Gum Health: What Changes, and When
Gums are hormone-responsive tissue. That is why the same routine can produce different results at different points in life — and why "you must not be flossing properly" is often the wrong conclusion.
Go deeper
Each of these has a page of its own — the routine, the products, and the questions people actually ask.
