I was trained to remove it. Now I help patients protect it.

I used to think biofilm was the enemy. That’s what we were taught in dental school:  Scrub harder. Rinse longer. Kill the “sugar bugs.” But that was wrong. If your biofilm is depleted, it’s not just your gums at risk. You’re operating without one of your body’s core immune barriers. This isn’t about dental health. It’s about whole-body resilience. What I wish more people knew—and what I wish I’d understood earlier—is that biofilm isn’t grime. It’s infrastructure. A living, breathing matrix that houses the oral microbiome—an ecosystem that evolved over billions of years to protect us.