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The AAOSH Oral Systemic Health Champion Results of 2017

For the third year in a row, the American Academy for Oral Systemic held our AAOSH Health Champion competition at the 7th Annual Scientific Session in Salt Lake City last September.

Unfortunately, we had a small problem that delayed the release of our final results. However, we feel that we have solved that problem and, going forward, we don’t expect that challenge to ever hold us back again. What AAOSH has supported, for our attendees’ benefit, is quite a massive undertaking. So please accept our sincere apologies and we thank you all for your patience. This testing is worth it!

We made available five medical screening tests to assess oral and systemic health. For those who took all five tests, we set up a scoring system to award our best screening attendee the title of AAOSH Oral Systemic Health Champion. We don’t just want to teach oral systemic health, we want to be oral systemic health. We want to walk the talk and discover who are the health mentors among us to follow.

AAOSH is proud to announce that Anthony Previte won the contest with an overall score of 95. He was the clear-cut winner on the basis of solid OralDNA, A1c, CRP, and CIMT scores. Previte, a registered nurse from the Austin, Texas area, came to the conference with his wife Rebecca (also a nurse) and his mother-in-law, Jennifer Lee Scott, who is a dentist DeSoto, Texas. His prize package consists of free admission to the 8th Annual Scientific Session, which will be held in Las Vegas on November 8-10, 2018. He will also receive his airfare and hotel accommodations completely free, courtesy of Xlear. Previte credits his win to a good oral care regimen of brushing and flossing along with regular dental visits. Previte also follows a steady diet of no processed sugars.

This is the first time that the AAOSH health champion has come from outside of the dental community.

Here’s How We Scored the Health Champion Contest

100 possible points (average contestant score was 68, last year was 70)

OralDNA—Saliva Pathogen Test

(20 points possible)

Lose 5 points for every pathogen over threshold. Double penalty for high-risk pathogens, Triple for A. actinomycetemcomitans.

A1c—Blood Sugar Control/Systemic Inflammation Test

(20 points possible)

5.6 and below gets the full 20 points. Lose 3 points for every .1 over that 5.6. Anyone with a 6.3 and above will lose all of their points as 6.3 is knocking on the diabetic door (greater than 6.4 is in the diabetic range).

CRP—Systemic Inflammation

(20 points possible)

Full 20 points for 0 – .9. Lose 1 point for every 0.1 over .9.  A CRP of 2.9 or greater receives zero points (3.0 is high risk for heart disease and stroke).

CIMT—Artery Inflammation

(35 points possible)

Lose 1 point for every year your measured artery age is over your chronological age. Soft plaques present lose all 35 points.

Biophotonic Scanner—Antioxidant Level

(5 points possible)
0 Points under 40,000
1 Point for 40,000 range
2 Points for 50,000 range
3 Points for 60,000 range
4 Points for 70,000 range
5 Points for 80,000+

Summing Up the 2017 Testing Results

We performed 300 medical tests at our meeting and here is a breakdown of the results.

Carotid Intima Media Thickness Ultrasounds (CIMT)

62 total tests taken composed of:

22 males

  • Average chronological age: 55.5
  • Average vascular age: 48.1 (7.4 years under actual age)

40 females

  • Average chronological age: 49.8
  • Average vascular age: 55.2 (5.4 over actual age)

Results:

  • 35% had visible plaques in their arteries.
  • One person screened 29% blockage—a serious concern!
  • The bottom 10% had an average artery age 19 years older than their chronological age (inflammation red flags!)

Male testers, on average, had a much younger arterial age than women. The large gap of average arterial ages between male and female testers on their average ages is certainly something to pay attention to.

15 persons screened in the 75% and up range with a 40% chance of heart attack in next 10 years. This accounts for 24% of all patients who took a CIMT test. Twelve of the patients who tested above the 75% threshold were women. Credible research has shown that one out of every three women die from heart-related conditions. These numbers should be very concerning!

The bottom 10% had an average artery age 19 years older than their chronological age (inflammation red flags!). The trend we saw in these patients with much older arterial ages that a handful of them are young in their 20’s.

OralDNA

We took 33 OralDNA salivary pathogen tests.  24% of those tested had at least one or more of the screened periodontal pathogens at a level that was over the tissue-damaging threshold level. Four of those tested had high levels (over threshold) of one or more of the 5 high risk periodontal pathogens. We additionally include F. nucleatum since it is considered by Bale and Doneen to be causative of atherosclerosis. In fact, Bale and Doneen don’t want to see any levels of those pathogens!

So with that in mind,  28 of all the attendee testers had presence of dangerous high risk bacteria! That's all but 5! Sound the alarm here, because almost everyone had presence of high-risk periodontal pathogens.

A1c

We took 37 A1c blood tests to screen for blood sugar control and inflammation. Our screening identified 2 diabetics (5.4% of those tested) and 10 people with pre-diabetes (27% of those tested).

That's a total whopping 32% of our participants who screened diabetic or pre-diabetic. Doesn’t it seem obvious that we should be testing all of our patients as well?

C-Reactive Protein

We took 37 CRP blood tests to screen for systemic inflammation. Our screening identified 14 people (37.8%) who screened high risk for a cardiovascular event like heart attack or stroke. One person’s CRP was 121.6—40 times what is considered high-risk for heart attack or stroke.

BioPhotonic Antioxidant Scan

We used the biophotonic laser scanner on 73 people to read a carotenoid level that is representative of a person’s antioxidant uptake. For the purpose of this story, only 42 scan scores were retrieved after an exhaustive search effort. The scores that could not be found would not have changed the outcome of our contest. When it comes to antioxidants taken up by the body, the general consensus is that the more you have, the better it is for your health. The average score was 38,000 with a high score of 61,000 and a low score of 10,000.

Oral-Systemic Health Testing: What’s Next?

Our increased level of oral systemic medical testing and our AAOSH health champion contest have been significant advances for our organization.  AAOSH offers the opportunity to educate and save lives! We want to screen and save our members’ lives first so that they can go out into the world with a higher level of knowledge and passion and save the lives of others with this oral systemic screening.

Our champion, Anthony Previte, has given us significant detail about his healthy lifestyle and we will share this in our next AAOSH Connect along with some tips from our other top finishers.

But what about those attendees who didn’t score well? What did they do if they had screenings that demanded immediate follow-up? Did they act on the information? You may be very surprised by my findings. I’ll report all of the good and the bad in Part 2 of my wrap up of our 2017 AAOSH Oral Systemic Health Champion contest. Look for that in next month’s AAOSH Connect.

Taking Things Up A Notch in 2018

For our 2018 Scientific Session, we will not only have AAOSH testing available, but also testing with AAPMD (airway/breathing) and ACAM. We are still working out the details and will keep you posted via the website, email, and social media, so watch for those and see you in Vegas in November!