While it’s important to care for your teeth purely for the goal of maintaining healthy teeth, many people otherwise attentive to their health are lax in making regular visits to their Albuquerque general dentist. It may surprise you to know that the consequences of poor dental health can extend far beyond your mouth, however—causing problems you’d never expect to be related.
Headaches
This one is fairly well-known, but it can still surprise people to find out their chronic headaches stem from misaligned teeth or long-ignored cavities. Regular headaches can vanish overnight if the problem stems from your mouth—so get it checked out.
Mental impairment
Not only has poor dental health been associated with stress and other mental health issues, there’s early evidence linking poor dental health directly to dementia in older individuals—evidence which suggests not a decrease of dental health due to dementia, as might be expected, but rather causation which goes the other direction.
Respiratory ailments
A number of chronic and acute respiratory illnesses have been associated with gum disease in recent studies. Researchers theorize that the inhalation of bacteria leads to inflammation of the lungs, resulting in COPD, pneumonia, and other problems.
Joint inflammation
As with respiratory ailments, the bacteria found in a poorly cared-for mouth is to blame for this potential ailment. In the mouth of a person without gum disease, there’s relatively little harmful bacteria to be found; in the mouth of someone with gum disease, there are microorganisms which can prove quite destructive should they enter your blood stream. Scientists have noticed that in arthritic patients, bacteria in the joints is directly related to bacteria found in the mouth.
Heart disease
The big one, and the subject of quite a bit of debate in recent years. The predicted mechanism of this connection is much the same as that seen in others, where bacteria of the mouth presumably enters the blood stream and thus increases plaque formation, inflames blood vessels, and potentially inflames the heart. The exact nature of the relationship between gum disease and heart disease remains unclear, but it’s definitely worth considering when assessing your dental health.
As you can see, general dentistry isn’t just about keeping your teeth healthy. Your mouth is a critical part of your body – and thus crucial to protect for your general health. Do your body and your mouth a favor and schedule your bi-annual dental exam with Heflin Family Dentistry today!