I'm not refuting that good dental hygiene is important, but I had an interesting experience at the dentist a few weeks ago, which I've been trying to understand, and this article hints at my issue with current dentistry.<p>They discuss oral bacteria, but never name the bacteria that is responsible for the decay, if it is in fact decay. They don't talk about good and bad bacteria. The oral surgeon I went to see said "you've got gum disease", and he said this with 100% confidence based on what he suggested was that my gums were "detaching from" my wisdom teeth, and therefore my wisdom teeth had to be removed before any more damage was done.<p>A different dentist said the same thing to me 17 years ago. I've got 5mm pockets and if we don't take out those teeth, it will get worse. It hasn't gotten worse, nobody has said anything about what sort of bacteria this is. How do they know that this is not the natural position of my gums on those teeth.<p>When we discuss bacteria in any other part of the body, don't we name that bacteria? Don't we know the good from the bad and test for these things?<p>The dentist and surgeon's concerns were that the gums would completely separate from the tooth. So I told them...if you pull the teeth out, they're definitely going to be separated!<p>I'm hopeful that in the next decade we will test for the bacterial balance, or types and have x-biotics or similar methods to adjust the bacteria, not just pull out teeth. I'm still not sure what I'm going to do about it.