About

Medical Advice For You is a small independent health information project about one subject: the relationship between the health of the mouth and the health of the rest of the body. It is not a clinic. It sells nothing, treats no one, and has no products or services to promote.

We chose this subject because it is unusually badly served. The mouth genuinely is connected to the rest of the body, and there is real research behind several of those connections. There is also a great deal of overstatement built on top of that research, much of it repeated in good faith and some of it attached to something being sold. A headline can convert a statistical association into a cause with a single word, and the reader is left holding a claim the underlying study never made.

Our editorial approach follows from that. We try to say plainly what has been observed, what has been demonstrated, and what remains uncertain. Where research shows only that two things occur together, we write that they are associated. Where a causal link has actually been established, we say so. Where trials have failed to confirm a popular claim, we report that as well, rather than quietly leaving it out. We prefer directional language to invented precision: better to write that a finding has appeared repeatedly across studies than to attach a percentage we cannot stand behind.

Rosalind Achterberg is the editor and writer. She is a health writer and not a clinician. She holds no dental or medical qualification and does not treat patients. Articles here are researched against material published by established dental and public health bodies, and they are not reviewed by a clinician before publication. We state that plainly rather than implying an approval that has not taken place.

Everything published here is general information. It cannot take account of your history, your medicines or your circumstances, and it is no substitute for being examined. Anything you notice in your own mouth belongs with your own dentist or doctor, who can actually look at it.