Dental Hygiene Can Affect Your Health (Outside of Tooth Decay)

An interesting article in Medical News Today talks about the affects of proper hygiene (or improper hygiene) on your overall health. The article Beyond tooth decay: why good dental hygiene is important and which can be read here highlights 3 areas of your health that can be impacted.

They are:

• Alzheimer’s disease
• Pancreatic cancer
• Heart disease

This is in addition to other more commonly known factors that can impact not only your dental health, including obesity and smoking.

# 1 Alzheimer’s disease

Gum disease-causing bacteria has been found to leave the mouth and enter the brain, either directly throughout nerves leading to the brain or through blood in the circulatory system.

A link between gum inflammation and Alzheimer’s disease by researchers at NYU showed…

“Study participants were nine times more likely to have a score in the lower range of the cognitive test – the “digit symbol test” (DST) – if they had inflammation of the gums.”

# 2 Pancreatic cancer

Researchers at the Harvard School of Public Health first detected evidence linking gum inflammation to increased risk of pancreatic cancer. Though unsure whether bacteria in the mouth is a cause or a result, they were able to establish ‘a link’ and hope to better understand the relationship.

“Examining data on gum disease from the Health Professionals Follow-Up Study, which involved a cohort of more than 51,000 men and began collecting data in 1986, the Harvard researchers found that men with a history of gum disease had a 64% increased risk of pancreatic cancer compared with men who had never had gum disease.”

# 3 Heart Disease

In an interesting link, research teams at the University of Bristol in the UK and the Royal College of Surgeons in Dublin, Ireland found that people with bleeding gums from poor dental hygiene could be increasing their risk of heart disease.

“The researchers found that heart disease risk increased because – in people who have bleeding gums – bacteria from the mouth is able to enter the bloodstream and stick to platelets, which can then form blood clots, interrupting the flow of blood to the heart and triggering a heart attack.”

For more information…

A quick read of Medical News Today offers further coverage of these factors. The bolded copy in this blog post is attributed to Medical New Today.

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