Sleep apnea doesn't always fit the profile you'd expect. Dr. Gregory Ceraso spotted it in the healthy, mid-30s host interviewing him within the first two minutes of meeting, just by looking at her face.
In this episode of The Margin Line, guest host Ally Bashir sits down with Dr. Gregory Ceraso, Chief Dental Officer of Cordental Group, to unpack why the mouth is one of the most overlooked windows into whole-body health. With more than 45 years in dentistry — starting in jaw reconstruction for cancer and facial-trauma patients, and placing his first dental implants in 1981 — Dr. Ceraso brings a rare perspective on where dentistry and medicine meet.
He talks about:
- Why he calls dentists "physicians of the oral cavity," and the sleep apnea signs that show up in the mouth long before a physician ever catches them
- Greg's Road Show - the initiative to bring standard of care to every practice without stripping the creativity out of dentistry
- The pediatric sleep case he calls the proudest of his entire career: a nine-year-old who was missing school due to debilitating headaches
- The honest trade-offs of oral appliance therapy, including posterior open bite in deep-bite patients and the morning repositioner he uses to manage it
- How he built referral relationships with physicians by screening patients for sleep apnea and sending them their way
- The oral-systemic connection he lays out, from periodontal bacteria in the bloodstream to the emerging link between sleep apnea, deep sleep, and Alzheimer's
The episode is a wide-ranging conversation on sleep dentistry, raising the standard of care, and why the mouth reveals more about a patient's overall health than most people realize.