Kathleen Carson

February 2026 | By Dr. Kathleen Carson, DDS Founder, Oral-Vitality Introduction: A New Lens on Insulin Beyond Glucose Control For decades, the conversation around diabetes and periodontal disease has centered on hyperglycemia: advanced glycation end products, oxidative stress, impaired wound healing, and heightened inflammatory tone.However, emerging immunometabolic research suggests a paradigm shift hyperinsulinemia itself, independent of glucose levels, may directly shape periodontal immune...

February 2026 | By Dr. Kathleen Carson, DDS Founder, Oral-Vitality Introduction: A New Lens on Periodontal Inflammation and Neuroimmune Crosstalk Periodontitis is increasingly recognized as a chronic source of systemic inflammation. Beyond generalized inflammatory burden, emerging evidence points to more specific immune signaling pathways  that may connect oral inflammation to central nervous system (CNS) physiology. One such pathway involves CCL2 (monocyte chemoattractant protein-1) . This...

February 2026 | By Dr. Kathleen Carson, DDS Founder, Oral-Vitality Reframing Craniofacial Development as a Central Oral-Systemic Determinant Modern medicine is very good at figuring out what symptoms mean and what kind of disease they are. But a lot of chronic symptoms, like fatigue, cognitive instability, postural compensation, behavioral dysregulation, sleep fragmentation, and ongoing inflammation, don't respond to standard treatments. In numerous instances, the problem is not a deficiency...