A Prescription for Change: Food as Medicine & The Vital Role of Nutrition in Patient Care
About This Event
For too long, oral health care has focused narrowly on hygiene and restoration while relegating nutrition to a passing comment: “cut back on sweets.” This reductive approach ignores the profound role of diet in driving oral disease and systemic illness alike. A Prescription for Change is an interactive lecture that confronts this gap head-on, offering oral health professionals the knowledge and tools to reframe their clinical approach. Participants will explore how nutrition shapes the oral and gut microbiomes, influences cardiovascular and cognitive health, affects cancer risk and ultimately determines vitality and disease resistance. But this lecture goes beyond biochemistry. It is a call to action. As frontline healthcare providers with regular patient contact, dental professionals are uniquely positioned to influence behavior and shift the health trajectory of their communities. This presentation will challenge outdated paradigms and invite participants to embrace their role as agents of systemic change. Nutrition is not outside our scope; it is at the core of preventive care. It’s time to move from cleaning teeth to changing lives. You Will Learn: To describe the biological relationship between nutrition, the oral and gut microbiomes and systemic health conditions, emphasizing the role of teeth as early indicators of metabolic imbalance; To evaluate the shortcomings of traditional oral health guidance that focuses solely on hygiene and to recognize the influence of diet, particularly ultra-processed foods, on oral and systemic disease; To incorporate evidence-based nutritional strategies into dental practice to support prevention and health promotion at both the individual and community levels; To demonstrate motivational interviewing techniques to engage patients in meaningful conversations about dietary habits, lifestyle choices and long-term health goals; To develop and implement a practice-level action plan that integrates nutrition-focused care through patient education, clinical documentation and interdisciplinary team collaboration.
Learning Objectives
- To describe the biological relationship between nutrition, the oral and gut microbiomes and systemic health conditions, emphasizing the role of teeth as early indicators of metabolic imbalance
- To evaluate the shortcomings of traditional oral health guidance that focuses solely on hygiene and to recognize the influence of diet, particularly ultra-processed foods, on oral and systemic disease
- To incorporate evidence-based nutritional strategies into dental practice to support prevention and health promotion at both the individual and community levels
- To demonstrate motivational interviewing techniques to engage patients in meaningful conversations about dietary habits, lifestyle choices and long-term health goals
- To develop and implement a practice-level action plan that integrates nutrition-focused care through patient education, clinical documentation and interdisciplinary team collaboration.