Hi everyone,
This week I've been deep in the research for our new women's health series on The Health Review Podcast, and one study in particular stopped me in my tracks. It's about endometriosis — specifically, how often women discussing it online express medical mistrust compared to those discussing menopause or other health topics. We’re covering it below in this week's news section.
It's exactly the kind of finding that reminded me why I wanted to build this series in the first place. When the average endometriosis diagnosis still takes up to nine years in the UK, that mistrust isn't hard to understand. It reflects something a lot of women reading this will already know from their own experience, or someone close to them.
Over the summer we have a brilliant line-up of women's health experts coming onto the show — covering everything from perimenopause and UTIs to the vaginal microbiome, thrush, and infertility. If you have a question you'd like me to put to them, please do hit reply. I'd love to include you in the show.
Emily x
🩺 Women are far more likely to distrust medicine when it comes to endometriosis than menopause
A striking new study presented at the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists found that women discussing endometriosis online expressed medical mistrust more than twice as often as those discussing menopause — 16.8% compared to 7.8%. "A lot of endometriosis patients have been told their symptoms weren't real in the first place," said Dr Daniel Ginn, a pelvic pain and endometriosis specialist at UCLA. Researchers noted that both conditions are areas where debate, misinformation and confusion persist even within the medical community — but the scale of the gap suggests endometriosis care in particular has further to go in rebuilding patient trust. Given how long the average endometriosis diagnosis currently takes (up to 9 years in the UK), this data reflects something many women reading this will recognise instinctively.
💊 Ozempic and Wegovy dosing mistakes are sending thousands to poison control
Poison control calls involving semaglutide have soared since the drug was approved by the FDA for weight management, with researchers at University of Texas at San Antonio linking the increase to accidental dosing mistakes rather than the medication itself being dangerous — often confusion between different pen doses or units.
🥦 Why are healthy young non-smokers developing lung cancer?
Researchers at University of Southern California found that young non-smokers under 50 with unusually healthy diets — rich in fruits, vegetables and whole grains — had higher rates of lung cancer than the general population, with women in particular both eating more of these foods and developing the disease more often. The researchers stress the foods themselves aren't the problem — they suspect pesticide residue on conventionally grown produce may be a contributing factor, pointing to existing research showing higher lung cancer rates among agricultural workers with long-term pesticide exposure. The findings are preliminary, pesticide levels weren't directly measured in participants, and the next phase of research will test this directly through blood and urine samples.
🦷 Gum disease bacteria may be quietly linked to a serious heart valve condition
Preliminary research presented at the American Heart Association's conference this week suggests that bacteria linked to gum disease may help drive calcific aortic valve stenosis — a common and potentially life-threatening condition where the heart's aortic valve gradually thickens and calcifies, making it harder for blood to flow through the body. Researchers found unexpectedly high levels of Porphyromonas gingivalis, a key gum disease bacterium, in calcified heart valves removed during surgery — and in mouse studies, repeated exposure to the bacterium caused it to accumulate in the aortic valve, worsen calcification and trigger symptoms of the disease, largely by activating a specific inflammatory protein. Preventive antibiotics reduced the effect. "The key message is simple: take good care of your oral health," said lead author Chenyang Li.
🏥 NHS Commits £10bn to AI Expansion
The NHS is set to invest £10 billion in artificial intelligence, in what the government is framing as a major modernisation of health services. The BMJ's analysis of the policy outlines both the ambitions behind the spending and the concerns being raised — including questions about oversight, data governance, and whether the technology will genuinely benefit patients. AI tools are already being piloted across diagnostics and administrative functions within the NHS. Critics are asking how outcomes will be measured and who is accountable when things go wrong. As a regulator-adjacent policy announcement, the detail of implementation will matter as much as the headline figure.
Today's issue is supported by SONA
Today's newsletter is supported by SONA, an AI-powered vagus nerve stimulator that sits comfortably inside your ear. Earlier this year I had SONA's founder, Jane Ollis, on the podcast for a proper deep dive into the nervous system — one of my favourite conversations on the show, and well worth a listen if you haven't already. The device itself targets the auricular branch of the vagus nerve via the ear and adapts its stimulation in real time to your body, rather than using a fixed setting — built by a genuinely brilliant team of neuroscientists, astrophysicists, researchers and engineers. The Health Review readers get 15% off with code THR at checkout.
How the oral microbiome shapes your whole-body health
Most of us think about our mouths in isolation. We brush, we (hopefully) floss, we book a checkup when something hurts. But what if the bacteria living in your mouth right now are doing something far more significant — shaping the health of your heart, your blood sugar levels and possibly even your brain?
It sounds surprising. But the mouth is the front door to the entire digestive system, and the bacterial world inside it is far more connected to the rest of the body than most of us have ever been told. As one biological dentist put it to me recently — medicine and dentistry used to be married. Now they're divorced. And patients are left bridging the gap.
The gut starts in the mouth
Every time you swallow, bacteria from your mouth travel into your gut. Hundreds of species have co-evolved with us over millions of years, and it isn't their presence that matters — it's the balance between them. Diet, sleep, stress levels, how you breathe and what you rinse with all shift that balance, either towards or away from the bacteria that cause problems.
Think of it like a garden. You wouldn't spray weed killer across the whole lawn — you'd want to nurture what's already growing there. Aggressive antibacterial mouthwashes do exactly that, wiping out beneficial bacteria alongside the harmful ones.
Gum disease reaches further than the gums
The connection between oral bacteria and heart health is well established — particularly for people with pre-existing heart valve conditions, where a mouth infection can trigger something serious called infective endocarditis. The relationship with type 2 diabetes is even more interesting, because it runs in both directions. High blood sugar in the gum tissue favours the bacteria that cause damage, and gum inflammation in turn makes blood sugar harder to control. Treating gum disease produces modest improvements in blood sugar — not dramatic ones, but meaningful.
The most striking and least settled connection is with dementia. A 2019 study found DNA from a bacteria called P. gingivalis — the main driver of chronic gum disease — in around 90% of the Alzheimer's brains examined. Since then, a growing body of research has been looking more closely at the link, and a randomised controlled trial is currently recruiting patients to test a drug that specifically targets this bacteria in people with Alzheimer's.
It isn't proof of causation — the bacteria may enter a brain already compromised by Alzheimer's rather than cause it — but it's enough to make the conversation worth having.
The everyday habits quietly shifting the balance
Some of the things most commonly used for oral hygiene are worth looking at more carefully.
Antibacterial mouthwashes — particularly chlorhexidine-based ones — kill the bacteria on the tongue that produce nitric oxide, a molecule that helps regulate blood pressure. Research has shown that a week of antibacterial rinsing was enough to reduce nitric oxide levels and raise blood pressure in participants. The effect was small, but for something most people use without a second thought, it's worth pausing on.
Brushing alone reaches roughly 60% of tooth surfaces. The spaces between teeth — where the most damaging build-up tends to happen — need floss or interdental brushes to clean properly. And mouth breathing, which bypasses the nitric oxide that nasal breathing naturally delivers, has downstream effects on circulation and immune function. If you wake up with a dry mouth or know you tend to breathe through your mouth, it's worth raising with your dentist rather than ignoring.
Where testing sits right now
Saliva-based microbiome tests can identify which bacterial strains are dominant in your mouth and are particularly useful for anyone with active gum disease. The evidence for using those results to personalise diet or lifestyle is promising but still emerging — two people with the same bacteria can have very different outcomes depending on how their immune system responds. These tests aren't available on the NHS and typically cost over £100 privately. Useful, but treat them as an evolving tool rather than a definitive answer.
The simple things worth doing
Floss or use interdental brushes every day. That 40% of tooth surface that brushing misses is where the real trouble starts.
If you wake with a dry mouth or suspect you're a mouth breather, ask your dentist about tongue scraping — one of the lowest-effort habits with a meaningful impact on the oral microbiome.
If you're using an antibacterial mouthwash out of habit rather than on clinical advice, have a conversation with your dentist about whether you actually need it. Some people are prescribed these rinses for very good reasons — post-surgery, active infection, high cavity risk — and shouldn't stop without that conversation first.
The mouth isn't a separate compartment. What lives in it is doing far more than keeping your teeth clean.
This feature is for educational purposes only and does not constitute medical advice. Always consult your own doctor or dentist before making changes to your health.
Holistic Dentist on the Oral Microbiome — and why what's living in your mouth is affecting your whole body
