The Gum Disease Blog

A blogger was asking for some dental professional reviews of Periogen in December 2010. I just picked this up off of hygienetown.com. They were discussing patients with heavy calculus (tartar):

“I read about a product once on Dentaltown message boards called Periogen. I took the info back to my boss. He decided we could give it a try. It has made a HUGE difference in these patients that you are describing.”

Welcome to the Gum Disease Blog! We created this running Blog in 2007 to have an open forum for discussing Periogen®, the tartar dissolver, as well as home dental care in general. As more people become enlightened to the magic that is Periogen®, a new era is emerging where people will manage their own oral health, rather than living helplessly every day in dread of some future dental appointment, scheduled or not. Seek the assistance of dental professionals with the confidence that your home care regimen includes dissolving tartar.

There are many questions and answers here. Feel free to post your questions, and one of us will give you the answers.

You are also encouraged to share your dental experiences here.

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If more dentists carried Periogen, fewer of us would end up being referred to the Periodontist for surgical procedures. If more dentists carried Periogen, fewer of us would experience pain during routine dental cleanings. If more dentists carried Periogen, fewer of us would be told we needed deep cleanings, scalings, or root planings. Does YOUR dentist carry Periogen? Does YOUR dentist know about Periogen? If not, why not? Wouldn’t any good dentist who cares about his/her patients, want to know about and recommend a product that dissolves tartar above and below the gumline? I’m just asking….

Hello All. It has been well over three years since some of you started using Periogen. We would like this community to share experience regarding:
* how long you’ve been using Periogen;
* which supporting apparatae you use, e.g., WaterPik, Deep Prober, just swishing;
* what your results to date have been; and
* advice for new users.

Some of us here at The Periogen Company use product twice a day, every day, with WaterPik PikPocket; others, once a day; others, every other day, just swishing with water. All comments on use and results help us to keep the right products on our site.

We recommend applying Periogen with an oral irrigator–a machine that pumps Periogen dissolved in water under gums, over gums, along the gum/tooth margin, between teeth and around teeth. Having said that, one of the dental professionals and industry thinkers in whom we have utmost respect (he is an industry pioneer and mentor to dentists and hygienists and innovators alike), Dr. Paul H. Keyes, applies Periogen by simply swishing it in his mouth with water. When use of an oral irrigator isn’t convenient physically or logistically (camping, for instance, as we did this past summer, sans oral irrigator), swishing, or applying periogen to your toothbrush, are both good options. However, if you are able to use an irrigator, here’s the one we recommend:

WaterPik Ultra with Pik Pocket Tip. We sell it on the site and you can find it quite easily in drugstores. There are many oral irrigators and we’ve tried most of them. We find that the WaterPik maintains a stronger and consistent pulse than others on the market, and very importantly, the Pik Pocket Tip is simply DESIGNED for those of us with pockets containing tartar that needs to be REACHED and DISSOLVED.

If you have had success with another irrigator, PLEASE let us know.

It is no secret that we here at The Periogen Company are familiar (some of us personally) with deep pockets, deep cleaning, root planing, and the accompanying pain and expense. Why, then, would we want to discuss a tool–the periodontal ENDOSCOPE–used in the manual removal of subgingival (under the gum line) tartar? Well, for starters, it is used for other restorative purposes, as well, some of which we have tried. And most importantly, it enables the practitioner to actually SEE under the gum line so they are not blindly scraping under the gum but are instead able to work more carefully, more safely, more cautiously, more thoughtfully. We LOVE the endoscope.

Now, having said all this, PLEASE, don’t let anyone scrape or plane under your gums. You must use Periogen with an oral irrigator for three months minimum in order to understand if you still even HAVE a problem with subgingival tartar. Secondarily, once you have naturally dissolved the tartar with Periogen, depending upon how deep your pocket was (we have seen 10′s and 12′s), you may want to look at some bone and tissue restoration options. This is where the endoscope is vital.

The practitioner (we recommend Judy Carroll of PerioPeak, based in Washington State) uses Emdogain to stimulate bone and tissue growth around the pocket (now tartar-free, thanks to YOU and Periogen). If applied using a periodontal endoscope, there is little disruption and optimal application of the growth-stimulating Emdogain.

Blogsters: What say you? Questions? Comments?

For those of us who like to see as well as read customer feedback, we posted several Periogen testimonials on YouTube. Please check them out and let us know what you think: has your experience been similar, different? One testimonial, from a retired Navy Commander in his 80′s, is only 7 seconds long but packs a strong punch: http://www.youtube.com/my_playlists?p=39BAB6B0995CF04E.