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.
