GlaadBlog.org is an independent dental health publication. We are not a clinic, we do not sell treatment, and we earn nothing when you buy a whitening kit. What we do is take the questions people actually type at 11pm - is this bleeding normal, will an implant hurt, does whitening toothpaste do anything at all - and answer them the way a good dentist would if they had twenty unhurried minutes.
Everything here is written for the person sitting in that chair - not for the practice that owns it.
Search almost any dental question and you land in one of two places. The first is a clinic page, where the answer to every problem happens to be an appointment at that clinic. The second is an affiliate site, where the answer to every problem is a gadget with a discount code attached. Both can be accurate. Neither is disinterested.
That matters more in dentistry than in most subjects, because the gap between what a treatment costs and what a patient can independently verify is enormous. Most people cannot tell whether they really needed the crown. They cannot read the radiograph. They are being asked to consent to something irreversible, in a chair, usually within ten minutes of being told there is a problem.
Good public information closes part of that gap. Bodies such as the American Dental Association and the National Institute of Dental and Craniofacial Research publish careful, conservative guidance, and we lean on it constantly. But it is written to be unimpeachable rather than readable. It rarely tells you what four months of implant healing actually feels like, or which of the six whitening products on the shelf is twenty dollars wasted.
GlaadBlog.org sits in that gap deliberately: the evidence base of the professional sources, written in the register of a friend who happens to know the field. Where something is genuinely contested - and a surprising amount of dentistry still is - we say it is contested rather than picking whichever answer reads more cleanly.
Three stages, in the same order, for every clinical page. The long version - including how we handle corrections, sourcing and conflicts of interest - is set out in our editorial policy.
Drafting starts with the source material, not a keyword list: guidance from national dental bodies, systematic reviews, and the manufacturer data behind any product claim. Our senior writer is a registered hygienist, so the first draft already reflects what patients actually ask at the chairside.
The draft goes to the reviewer whose specialty it falls under - periodontal pages to a periodontist, aligner pages to an orthodontist. They check mechanisms, timelines, risk figures and, most usefully, they delete sentences that sound more certain than the evidence is.
Every guide carries the month it was last checked and the name of the clinician who checked it. We revisit pages when guidance changes, when a product category shifts, or on a scheduled cycle - whichever comes first. Silent edits to clinical content are not allowed.
None of this replaces an examination. Facial swelling, a tooth that throbs without provocation, gums that bleed every single day, or a knocked or cracked tooth are reasons to call a dentist now rather than read another article. Our medical disclaimer sets out exactly what this site can and cannot do for you.
Every clinical guide is signed off by a practising clinician in the relevant field, and their name appears on the page they reviewed. If a reviewer will not put their name to a sentence, the sentence does not run.
DDS
Chair, clinical review board
General dentist with 18 years in private practice, focused on restorative work and long-term treatment planning. Reviews every restorative and surgical guide before publication.
Restorative and implant dentistry
BDS, MSc Periodontology
Periodontal reviewer
Specialist periodontist. Her research background is in non-surgical management of periodontitis, and she checks everything we publish on gums, bleeding and bone loss.
Gum disease and soft-tissue health
DMD
Orthodontic reviewer
Orthodontist working with both fixed appliances and aligner systems. He is our check on any page that compares treatment options or quotes expected timelines.
Orthodontics and aligner therapy
DDS, MS
Endodontic reviewer
Endodontist. He reviews our pages on nerve pain, root canal treatment and dental trauma, and pushes back hard on anything that overstates what a procedure can do.
Root canals and dental painReviewers are paid a flat fee for their time. They are not paid by outcome, they hold no stake in the site, and they have no commercial relationship with any product we mention. Think we have got something wrong? Tell us - corrections are published with a date on them, not quietly patched.
A publication is defined as much by its refusals as by its output. These are ours, and they are the standard you should hold GlaadBlog.org to.
There is no clinic behind this site, no referral network and no booking form. Nothing we publish becomes more valuable to us if you decide to have a procedure done.
No brand can buy a recommendation, a ranking, or a mention dressed up as editorial. If we ever carry advertising it will be labelled as advertising, kept away from the clinical guidance, and never written by the advertiser.
A web page cannot see your radiographs or probe your gums. We explain what symptoms usually mean and when they warrant an appointment - the diagnosis belongs to the dentist in the room with you.
Where the evidence is thin, mixed or still argued over, we say so in plain words instead of rounding it up into a confident headline.
Independent oral-health information from the World Health Organization and CDC Oral Health is free to read, and we would rather point you to it than keep you here.
The library covers whitening, gums, implants, aligners, sensitivity and the daily routine that prevents most of it. If you cannot find what you need, or you think a page is wrong, write to us - a person reads every message.