14. The Relation Between Periodontal Disease And General Health

In the last topic, the option of using implants and their restora­tions, includ­ing their advan­tages and dis­ad­van­tages, to replace miss­ing teeth was dis­cussed. In this topic, the rela­tion between untreated advanced peri­odon­tal dis­ease and one’s over­all health will be dis­cussed. Many peo­ple do not even real­ize there is even a rela­tion between peri­odon­tal dis­ease and over­all health and do not real­ize what that rela­tion is.

Cer­tain med­ical con­di­tions have been found to increase one’s risk to peri­odon­tal dis­ease, there­fore these con­di­tions are known as con­tribut­ing risk fac­tors for peri­odon­tal dis­ease. It is impor­tant to note that these med­ical con­di­tions do not cause peri­odon­tal dis­ease. Peri­odon­tal dis­ease is caused by the bac­te­r­ial plaque on cal­cu­lus that has formed under the gums that has not been removed. How­ever once the process of peri­odon­tal dis­ease has begun due to its cause, these med­ical con­di­tions have an influ­ence on the area(s), degree and rapid­ity of gum and bone loss that occurs around the teeth in the mouth, assum­ing the peri­odon­tal dis­ease is not treated.

Some exam­ples of these med­ical con­di­tions include uncon­trolled dia­betes, uncon­trolled osteo­poro­sis, any dis­ease affect­ing one’s immune sys­tem and cer­tain can­cers. There are other risk fac­tors such as genet­ics, age, smok­ing, oral hygiene, reg­u­lar den­tal vis­its, though are not clas­si­fied as med­ical con­di­tions, are also impor­tant risk fac­tors for peri­odon­tal disease.

Using a sim­ple anal­ogy, the body is a 2 way street, which means that untreated advanced peri­odon­tal dis­ease has in recent years been found to increase one’s risk to cer­tain med­ical con­di­tions or dis­eases. This find­ing is not really sur­pris­ing as the mouth, gums and teeth are part of the whole body and all parts of the body are inter­con­nected through blood ves­sels and blood. Lymph nodes and their fluid also con­nect dif­fer­ent parts of the body to each other. Harm­ful bac­te­ria and prod­ucts of inflam­ma­tion asso­ci­ated with advanced peri­odon­tal dis­ease can enter the blood­stream through the blood ves­sels of the gums and cir­cu­late through­out the body and its organs. Harm­ful bac­te­ria can also be ingested or inhaled.

These harm­ful bac­te­ria and prod­ucts of inflam­ma­tion can set­tle in dif­fer­ent parts of the body such as the heart, brain, lungs and other organs and increase the risk of one acquir­ing unde­sir­able con­di­tions or dis­eases asso­ci­ated with those organs. For exam­ple, untreated advanced peri­odon­tal dis­ease has been asso­ci­ated with an increased risk of heart dis­ease, stroke, chronic lung dis­ease, pre­ma­ture birth in preg­nancy women and increased dif­fi­culty to con­trol dia­betes. New asso­ci­a­tions and increased risk between untreated advanced peri­odon­tal dis­eases and other med­ical con­di­tions or dis­ease are being dis­cov­ered at present and will be dis­cov­ered in the future.

These asso­ci­a­tions and increased risk between peri­odon­tal dis­ease and other med­ical con­di­tions or dis­ease that can affect one’s over­all health vary from being weak risks to being strong risks. How­ever regard­less of the strength of the increased risk, it is in one’s inter­est to pre­vent peri­odon­tal dis­ease, treat exist­ing peri­odon­tal dis­ease as early as pos­si­ble and main­tain the results of peri­odon­tal treat­ment to lower one’s risk to a num­ber of unde­sir­able med­ical con­di­tions or dis­eases that can lower one’s over­all health.

In pre­vi­ous top­ics, we have dis­cussed the nature of gin­givi­tis and peri­odon­tal dis­ease, its need for early detec­tion, it’s pre­ven­tion, treat­ment and main­te­nance of treat­ment results, the options used to replace miss­ing teeth as a result of peri­odon­tal dis­ease and the ben­e­fits of peri­odon­tal dis­ease pre­ven­tion and treat­ment locally ( in the mouth ) and gen­er­ally ( in rela­tion to one’s over­all health ). There is a say­ing that every­thing in life has a price. In the next topic, we will dis­cuss the issue of price ver­sus cost in pre­vent­ing and treat­ing peri­odon­tal dis­ease and other den­tal dis­ease or conditions.