General health

Gum disease

Gum disease is the commonest cause of tooth loss in adults, and it takes teeth that have nothing else wrong with them. The early stage is completely reversible; the later stage is not, but it can be stopped at any point — and loose teeth are not automatically for extraction.

Tooth decay and cavities

Decay is a process; a cavity is the hole it eventually makes. The process is reversible for a surprisingly long time and the hole never is — which is why how often sugar is eaten matters more than how much, and why pain arrives so late. Also erosion, which is not decay at all and needs different advice.

Dental check-ups

The six-monthly check-up is a convention, not a recommendation: UK guidance sets the interval individually, anywhere from three months to two years. What an examination actually covers, including the mouth cancer check most patients do not realise is happening, and what not to wait for.

Fluoride and teeth

Fluoride is the most effective thing available for preventing decay, and it does not work the way it is usually described — which changes what is worth doing about it. How it works at the tooth surface, where it comes from in the UK, and what the evidence on water fluoridation and fluorosis actually shows.

Cleaning teeth and gums

Nobody who only brushes is cleaning their teeth: a brush cannot reach the surfaces where two teeth touch, and that is where decay and gum disease start. Brushing technique and the damage done by brushing too hard, interdental brushes and floss, and the things that make the rest harder.

Why dental care matters

Almost everything that goes wrong with teeth is preventable, and almost all of it is prevented by the same small set of dull habits. What a tooth is made of, why the mouth matters beyond the teeth, and the whole of prevention in five lines.

Laser eye surgery

The three kinds of laser vision correction and why their results converge, who it suits, the risks worth knowing in advance, why it does not spare anyone reading glasses, and what it changes about future eye tests.

Wearing contact lenses safely

What the wear schedules actually mean, how to clean reusable lenses properly, why water and lenses must never meet, and the one symptom that means removing them and getting seen the same day.

Choosing contact lenses

The materials, designs and replacement schedules that contact lenses come in, what each is good for, and why the fitting matters more than the prescription.

Diabetes and mental health

Diabetes distress and burnout as named and common experiences rather than character failings, the raised rates of depression and anxiety, fear of hypoglycaemia, eating problems in type 1 — and the psychological support that UK care is supposed to provide every year and most often does not.

Buying glasses online

Where online supply is allowed and where it is not, what a prescription does and does not contain, why pupillary distance matters, and which prescriptions are a poor bet to order unseen.

Choosing glasses

Lens materials, index and coatings; the options for reading and distance in one pair; what tints, photochromics and polarisation each actually do; and the frame material question that is a health matter rather than a style one.

General health