If you’re waiting for a punch line, there isn’t one. Because there is a connection, and an important one, between oral health and heart disease, pregnancy problems, and even arthritis and cancer of the pancreas.
When I first started reading reports linking oral health and other medical conditions, I was skeptical. But as study after study comes out showing the connection, especially with cardiovascular diseases like strokes and heart attacks, it seems clear that there’s a connection, even if it seems bizarre.
If you have serious gum disease, you are twice as likely to have a heart attack, according to one study. In another, treating gingivitis lowered C-reactive protein and fibrinogen, blood stream markers that are known to predict heart attacks. Another study found that those with gum disease have more arteriosclerosis of the arteries to their brain, making them at risk for strokes. Yet another study found that those with gum disease do indeed have more strokes.
The mechanism is not clear, but the suggestion is that infected gums permit the entry of bacteria and the body’s inflammation products to enter the blood stream. Inflammation may damage the blood vessels directly, and bacteria may lodge in blood vessel walls. These in turn result in irritation to blood vessel walls, with cholesterol deposits and narrowing as a result.
To make matters worse, gum disease appears to cause other medical problems as well. Diabetes is much harder to control, and there are more complications in those with gum disease. Gum disease in pregnant women? They are seven times more likely to deliver premature babies with low birth weight. And reports last week again noted that those with gum disease were almost three times as likely to develop cancer of the pancreas.
However unlikely it may be, wherever we look we find systemic medical problems resulting from gum disease. While we may not have the full story on how periodontal disease causes these illnesses, the evidence points to your risk returning to normal if you treat gum disease when it exists. It is even better, of course, to prevent it in the first place. So there’s more reason than ever to listen to your dentist: floss every day.
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