It turns out your mouth may play a bigger role in heart health than anyone could have imagined.

We already know that what you eat can have a huge impact on your heart. The low-fat, high-carb “Torture Chamber Diet,” for example, has led directly to the obesity and diabetes epidemics now facing our nation. And that one-two punch has left our tickers battered and beaten, making heart disease our number one killer.

But now we have more evidence that it’s not just the food you put in your mouth that matters when it comes to your heart. How you treat your teeth and gums, and how clean you keep your kisser, appears to have a direct impact on your overall cardiac health.

To put it simply, dirty mouths – and I’m not talking about salty language – lead to more heart attacks, according to a study carried out at the University of Buffalo in New York and presented at a meeting of the International Association of Dental Research.

The researchers looked at 386 men and women who had suffered heart attacks, and 840 people who had no history of heart trouble. They found that the heart attack victims had higher levels of bacteria in their mouths.

This isn’t the first study to find a connection between the condition of our teeth and gums and the overall health of our hearts. No one’s quite been able to put a finger on exactly why it matters – it may be that the bacteria in the mouth causes inflammation that can spread and ultimately lead to blood clots.

But we do know this: It matters, and possibly quite a bit.

The researchers in Buffalo were trying to find out if a specific kind of bacteria in the mouth might be a better indicator of heart disease, and they did find two that seemed more prevalent in heart attack victims. But in general, it was the sheer number of bacteria – and not their type – that mattered most of all.

More bacteria meant more heart attacks. Period.

That means it’s more important than ever not only to brush your teeth after meals, but to visit the dentist twice a year for a more thorough cleaning.

Now, many of us look forward to a trip to the dentist’s office about as much as, well, a trip to the dentist’s office.

I understand how you feel. I’ve taken my lumps in that chair, too. You can brush twice a day and avoid sugary foods and still find yourself squirming when that light comes on and the hygienist leans in.

It’s tempting to skip it, and unfortunately that’s what many people do – especially as we get older. And that’s a huge mistake. When you consider how dramatically the risks to your heart increase as you age, you need to start looking at those dental trips as more than just oral hygiene pit stops.

Because now we can say almost for certain that your dentist isn’t just saving your teeth.  He may be saving your life.

This is going to sound like a joke, but I don’t think you’re going to laugh at the punch line.

Government investigators recently were able to get a fake and potentially dangerous procedure approved for human testing. And then they were able to register a phony institutional review board with a dog named Trooper as its president.

That’s right. This joke’s on you.

These review boards approve drugs and procedures for use in federally funded human tests. It turns out some of them are indeed a joke, and not just the one with the dog in charge. 

Many review boards have been tied to universities and medical institutions in the past, but a growing number have turned this process into a for-profit operation. It seems all you need to do is file some paperwork with the Department of Health and Human Services, and you’re in business.

Members of these review boards are generally doctors and scientists, but that alone doesn’t always stop them from making bad decisions.

Investigators working for the Government Accountability Office came up with a ridiculous and clearly fake scenario that involved pumping a liter of “Adhesiabloc,” a nonexistent gel, into a woman’s stomach after surgery to see if it would help reduce scar tissue.

The trial was designed to match what the Food and Drug Administration considers a significant risk.

That didn’t seem to be a problem for a review board from Colorado Springs, who essentially told them to go ahead and try it out.

The head of that organization claims they were “hoodwinked” and accused the investigators of violating laws when they misrepresented themselves. That’s a little like a burglar calling the trapdoor that caught him unfair and deceptive.

Somehow, two other independent review boards managed to see the procedure for what it was and rejected it. One called it “junk,” while a member of the other called it “the riskiest thing I’ve ever seen.”

And that’s one of the many, many problems with the process. You may be trying to push risky junk through the system, but you can keep on pushing until you find someone willing to sign off on it.

Officials from both the FDA and the Department of Health and Human Services were quick to defend the system. They say there are protections in place to make sure drug testing is done right.

But who can believe them now?

The stomach-gel procedure will obviously never be attempted despite the approval to do so. But the million-dollar question now is what potentially dangerous products have made it through these independent review boards and are being tested on humans right now?

Are you taking an unapproved – and possibly untested – narcotic?

These might sound like black-market drugs or the stuff you buy on the Internet, but they’re a lot more common than you probably think.

In fact, some of these drugs are probably sitting on the shelf at your local pharmacy right now. The Food and Drug Administration recently wrote to manufacturers to demand they stop distributing 14 unapproved painkillers, including prescription versions of morphine, hydromorphone, and oxycodone.

Unapproved drugs are those that have never been OK’d by the FDA. That means they’ve never undergone the testing process that drugs sold in the United States are supposed to pass.

But beyond that, they are sold and marketed like any other drug.

Chances are your doctor has written prescriptions for some of them – and he may not even know it. And if he doesn’t know, how can you?

Let’s call that one more reason why you should never assume anything when it comes to your health, especially regarding your medications.

The FDA believes around 2 percent of all prescriptions are for these kinds of meds. When you consider that nearly 4 billion prescriptions were written last year, that means close to 80 million of them were for unapproved drugs.

Some of these drugs have been on the market for a long time, before the present standards were laid out, and their manufacturers simply never bothered to go through the approval process with them.

But that’s no excuse.

You may know by now that I have a real problem with how the FDA approves drugs. Many medications that meet FDA standards have serious flaws and nasty side effects. Plenty of them are just plain ineffective. And too many of them are approved too quickly, before we know everything about them.

Now try to imagine drugs that don’t even meet those low standards.

When your doctor gives you a prescription, don’t be afraid to ask him about it. And you should always feel comfortable inquiring about non-drug alternatives. In many cases, you can avoid potential problems altogether by choosing a safe and effective drug-free treatment.

And when you are given a prescription, do a little homework – the FDA website has a database listing just about every drug approved since 1939, making that a pretty good place to start.

Because the sad truth of the matter is, if you don’t do these things for yourself, no one else is going to do them for you.

Is a low-fat diet better for your heart?

You can bet your ticker it’s not – but you won’t learn the truth by reading the latest study to hit the mainstream media.

The study, funded by the National Institutes of Health and published in the Journal of the American Dietetic Association, compared the maintenance phases of three diets: the low-carb, high-fat Atkins diet, the more moderate South Beach Diet, and the low-fat Ornish vegetarian diet. 

It found the Atkins diet to be least heart-friendly.

You might think they followed hundreds or even thousands of people on these diets for years at a time. But it turns out they looked at 18 people, each of whom tried each diet for four weeks, with a four-week “washout” period in between each one.

That’s it – just 18 people for four-week periods. Do you feel cheated yet? I know I do. 

What’s more, they based their findings on cholesterol levels and blood vessel dilation measurements in the arm.

The trouble is that those changes in blood vessel dilation can be caused by any number of things, such as a problem in the adrenal glands. In a group as small as 18 people, all it takes is one person experiencing one of those causes to skew the results one way or another.

Dr. Atkins was in many ways a visionary. He had the right idea when the declared that carbohydrates, not fat, are the enemy. Especially those refined carbs in all our processed foods. And he was bold enough to speak out against low-fat madness at a time when it was very unpopular to do so.

But there is still so much more to a diet than just fats versus carbs, just like there’s more to a diet than caloric intake. Nutrients and minerals play a crucial role in our bodies, yet few dieters consider that when planning their meals.

For example, our potassium to sodium ratio should be at 7 to 1. But most people take in far less potassium because our processed foods are packed with sodium. And a potassium deficiency can have a direct impact on your heart, no matter what kind of diet you stick to.

Correcting this potassium deficiency can also help you put a permanent end chronic fatigue. I’ve outlined a simple, 90-day cure for fatigue in the June issue of Health Revelations.