Two Brushes a Day Keeps the Doctor Away
How your oral health connects to… Everything
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For four newsletters, we’ve written about the importance of oral health and how critical it is to maintain it. Today, we dive into the why. We’ll talk about everything from your feet to your brain — like how unhappy gums and strokes go together — and everything in between.
The Fast Route to Your Heart
Heart health is one of the most discussed topics in healthcare. It seems like every day, we’re inundated with a new “heart-healthy” trend or treatment. However, one of the best ways to take care of your heart is simply flossing.
Gingivitis, and its more evil, more grown-up form, periodontitis, are both forms of gum inflammation. While bleeding when you go to the dentist and having generally sensitive gums is already rough, these conditions have a much more sinister effect. They inflame the whole body, including the vascular system.
Inflammation from periodontitis comes at a heavy cost. According to a Harvard publication, individuals with periodontitis can see a two-to-three times increase in their risk of a serious cardiovascular event like a stroke. While the exact mechanism at play is still being investigated, what is clear is that gum inflammation comes at a heavy cost to your heart.
Past the Teeth and to the Stomach
Your stomach is effectively connected to your mouth by a straight tube, so it isn’t too surprising to hear that your oral health can affect your gut health. However, the relationship is way deeper than just ‘happy mouth=happy gut’
When the bacteria balance of your mouth goes out of whack, the less friendly bacteria, like P. gingivalis, don’t have the courtesy to just stay in the mouth. Instead, they make their way into your digestive tract to continue their trail of destruction.
In your stomach, these bacteria can disrupt all sorts of functions. From a reduction in nutrition uptake to inflaming the gut, these bacteria can hurt the whole of your digestive health. Even worse, it can become a negative feedback cycle, where the bacteria cause reflux, only for the reflux to acidify your mouth, reducing the pH, damaging your teeth, and making it easier for those same bacteria to spread their hold.
Breathing in the Bad Stuff
Your stomach isn’t the only major organ connected to your mouth. Your lungs are just as dependent on your oral health as your stomach and just as vulnerable when things go awry.
When you breathe in, microbes from your nose and mouth are sucked down into your lungs. For those of us who are predominantly healthy, this isn’t a huge concern. The human body is well-evolved with dealing with the idea of breathing. However, it’s not well built for the inflammatory load that comes with periodontitis.
When your body is already suffering from deep inflammation, bacteria have more routes to worm their way into different systems. When a person has systemic inflammation, and their lungs are suddenly inundated with microbes, this can end up presenting as bronchitis or a sudden worsening of COPD. Even worse, for the elderly, where periodontal disease is common, the bacteria responsible for periodontitis can be directly responsible for pneumonia, a leading killer.
Kidney Conundrums and Brain Fog
The effects of oral health stretch beyond the systems directly connected to the mouth. Because of the inflammatory load that comes from oral health problems, nothing in your body can escape it.
One of the most intense examples is the feedback loop in chronic kidney disease. When periodontal inflammation increases by 10%, kidney function drops by 3%. And a 10% drop in kidney function leads to a 25% increase in periodontal inflammation. That means that without active control efforts, CKD and periodontitis can turn into a runaway train.
Your brain can feel the heat as well. Between the overall inflammation, reduced nutrient uptake, and other related issues, patients with bad oral health see reduced cognitive function over time. In fact, recent studies have even uncovered a link between oral health and dementia.
Healthy Habits Reverse the Trends
Oral health isn’t all doom and gloom, though. A healthy mouth, and more specifically, a mouth actively kept healthy, can be a huge tool in maintaining overall health. A healthy oral microbiome can aid in regulating your digestive system, improving nutrient uptake, and reducing digestive problems.
With every other link pointed out here, there is as much a positive as a negative. The maintenance of oral health can improve everything, from sleep to cardiac health to brain function.
Staying Healthy to Stay Safe
Keeping your mouth healthy doesn’t have to be hard. It doesn’t mean finding the health influencer-recommended magic kelp powder or mystic plant juice (in fact, you’d be better off just chewing on celery). It just means treating your mouth well and using it how it’s meant to be used.
Brushing, flossing, and going to the dentist are the best ways to keep your mouth healthy. Brushing twice a day and flossing at least once can alleviate huge amounts of inflammation and help the good bacteria in your mouth fight off the bad. Dentists take the fight even further, removing calculus and applying more focused treatments.
More data also always helps in the fight to stay healthy. That’s why we built Scout, the world's first wellness device. It provides information on your oral wellness trends so that you can keep up and improve your good habits.
As always, sign up here to get this newsletter straight to your inbox, and go check out Amardent’s Scout: The world’s most advanced at-home dentistry device.
Disclaimer: Scout is a wellness device, not a medical device. It is intended only for general health and wellness purposes, and it has not been evaluated, assessed, or approved by the FDA.
