Explaining the Link between Oral and Overall Health

You may see dental visit as a way to get your teeth cleaned and your oral health thoroughly checked. But the matter of fact is that this dental visit is something much more than dental cleaning and oral examination. This oral checkup is going to help you in maintaining your overall health in pretty effective way.

Now, many people would say that the connection between oral and overall health is pretty obvious. However, this connection is deeper than many people think. As a matter of fact, mouth can be regarded as a mirror of entire body, i.e. healthy mouth can represent better health of the entire body.

The connection

As you may know, mouth is full of bacteria. Many of those bacteria are harmless while many of those are pretty disastrous. When you do not take good care of your oral hygiene, you let the bad bacteria to jump into the driving seat and start making things worse in your oral cavity by disturbing the balance between harmless and bad bacteria. As a result, the initiation of infections becomes the bigger risk you will need to worry about. The most common issue which tends to occur in the oral cavity due to bacterial infection is the periodontal disease. When bacteria cause irritation in the gums, immune system releases enzymes which tend to fight with the bacteria. As a result of this battle, the gum tissues become even more infected, leading to the worsening of gum disease.

The gum disease doesn’t stop there. The bacteria and infection in the gum area gain access to the veins which are directly connected with the valves connected to the heart. When infection travels through those veins, the entire body gets exposed at the risk of several diseases because bacteria are now capable to reach any part of the body. The organs you really need to worry about in this regard include liver, stomach and entire gut.

Maintaining good overall health with the help of good oral health

The first thing to talk about is the diabetes. Diabetes is the condition which involves lack of insulin regulation in the body. Now, gum disease can result in resistance for insulin in carrying out its main function. It means that gum disease can actually result in diabetes. Another thing that is worth mentioning here is that the connection between oral health and diabetes is two-way, i.e. gum disease can result in diabetes and diabetes can result in gum disease.

According to researchers, inflammation in the mouth can result in inflammation in the blood vessels, leading to heightened risk of stroke. So, taking care of your oral health means you are also taking care of your cardiovascular health.

What to do?

The very basic thing you will need to take care of is your oral hygiene. Apart from this, you will have to make sure that you are visiting your dentist after every six months.