Dr Norman Swan

speaker

26,995 appearances 288 recordings 3 series first heard Apr 2006 last heard 15 Sep

Dr Norman Swan’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

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Recordings per month over the last 12 months — 10 in all, peaking in Sep 2026 with 3.

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What's That Rash? · Mouthwash: good or bad for you? · 8 Sep 2026 podcast

So if you're using a pacifier and you lick the pacifier or when you pick it up off the floor, which is what you should not do, you are transferring your microbiome to the mouth of the baby.

And that can transfer what are called caryogenic bacteria to the mouth.

So really

Dental decay, yes.

So you can ca you can acquire that very early on in life.

But the motor microbiome, and that's what you know, and if you eat sugary foods that feeds those bacteria, and then they form this very sticky plaque on your teeth, which then erodes the teeth in the form of dental decay.

Really one of the commonest infectious diseases we suffer from and an often unpublicized or

Underpublicized side effect of eating too much sugar in your diet, too much refined carbohydrate.

So the oral microbiome, though, is much more complex than that.

So there are bacteria, there are fungi, there are archae, which are very ancient forms of microorganisms, which are not fully understood, and viruses.

So it's a very rich microbiome.

And it's said that the microbiome changes in the mouth according to where you

So the gums seem to have a microbiome of their own, as well as the general mouth and teeth and so on.

We've already spoken about plaque.

It seems so.

You know, and at its core you want as healthy a microbiome as possible.

And it looks as though the microbiome in the mouth is different from the microbiome in the gut or the microbiome in the skin.

So it's a very specific environment.

And people have related the health of the mouth to the health of other organs, particularly the brain.

But we'll come back to that later.

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