An App For Everything?
Flossing and Your Health

Have you noticed that lately there seems to be an app for everything? Now that Verizon will be releasing the iPhone 4 to its customers in about a week, maybe I’ll stop being a smart-phone Luddite* and finally check one out.

Apparently, these smart-phones are amazing. It seems there are apps that can help you keep track of your weight. There are also apps to redirect you if you get lost. At my last CPR re-certification, I was told there is even an app that can guide a person through CPR if they have never done it before! Hmmm . . . Don’t know if I would want to be figuring out how to download that one in the middle of a crisis.

Anyway, I wish there were an app that could get people to floss.

Not that I want to put myself out of business or anything, but it really would go a long way to cutting down on people’s dental health care costs.

If the message hasn’t gotten across to most people yet, there are a number of preventive things that can be done to minimize problems and cut health care costs. Maybe dental floss isn’t a panacea - there are reasons beyond simply not flossing regarding why people develop dental problems - but it never ceases to amaze me how much flossing can help and how many people overlook this one basic activity.

The body of data linking periodontal disease to a wide variety of serious diseases has been growing steadily. Actually, if a person really stopped to look at it, one might become a little alarmed. Heart attacks, stroke, atherosclerosis, premature births, low birth-weight babies, miscarriages, diabetes, pneumonia, pancreatic cancer, Alzheimer’s, and Parkinson’s disease are among the problems that have been linked to deficiencies in dental hygiene.

While pregnancy is not a disease [of course, this may depend upon who you are talking to :-) ] there can be a number of health issues associated with it. Over the years, it has been common for me to hear patients tell me about gum problems that their mothers, grandmothers, friends - or they - experienced while pregnant. Some of this has to do with the elevated estrogen levels, some of it with increased demands placed by the developing fetus on the mother, and some of it with nutrition. But if periodontal disease already exists during pregnancy, a woman’s risk of experiencing a premature birth rises by 700 percent! The child also risks experiencing neurological disorders later in life.

Studies of pregnant women found strong uterine IgM in those with gum disease. IgM is an antibody response to specific oral pathogens. This is to say that the bacteria in pregnant women’s gums were causing inflammation in their uterus and this triggered premature birth. The fact that treating periodontal disease in pregnant women (much assisted by flossing) can reduce the incidence of premature births by four to five times should make it painfully obvious that there is benefit in prevention.

In another study, sixty seven patients with gum infections were compared to people free of gum disease. With this study, patients were asked to chew gum fifty times on each side of their mouth. What researchers were looking for was the number of bacteria in test subjects’ blood after doing so. Levels rose from 6 percent to 24 percent after chewing. Patients with severe periodontal problems had four times as many bacteria in their blood as those individuals with moderate, or no periodontal disease.

So why is that important? We know that cardiovascular disease and difficult-to-control diabetes are linked to periodontal disease.

Recently, I treated a patient with severe periodontal disease who had not sought dental care for many years. He had a history of heart disease and cancer. We cleared up his periodontal disease in a relatively short time (several weeks) and recently saw him for follow-up care. He told me that his doctor completed a PET scan on him after his therapy (not my idea, since I am not into radioactive tracers in my body), and for the first time, it came back clear.

My office is located across the street from a university hospital. A few years back, the hospital referred a patient to me (a former head of the city school board). This patient had a chronically elevated white blood cell count, but they couldn’t find the source of the problem. After running him through a battery of tests, they decided to send him to a dentist. This was a good call. He had periodontal disease. We treated it successfully and, again, the blood work finally came back negative.

What shouldn’t be overlooked, however, is that patients will often tell you that they feel better after they handle their gum problems. This is no small wonder. Cardiovascular disease doesn’t feel good. Gum infections can increase the risk of cardiovascular disease by as much as 200 percent.

If you have a mouthful of bacteria, it can affect your lungs too. When you inhale, fluid from your mouth can enter your lungs. This can lead to pneumonia or other respiratory infections. Those don’t feel good either.

When treating your gum problems, consult a professional, but also look for natural remedies which don’t contain toxins (such as fluoride) that will further burden your body. Check out some of John Chisholm’s excellent posts on this blog. As he points out, we really are not designed for gum disease.

Beyond that, I feel that it is always helpful to be proactive. Educating oneself, learning about nutrition, and keeping in the basics are important. One of those basics is flossing. Now I’ll have to get an iPhone and see if I can find that flossing app. . . .

(*) A Luddite is someone who fears, dislikes, or is incompetent when using new technology.

by Dr. Richard J. Walicki - January 20, 2011

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Dr. Richard J. Walicki is a mercury-free Philadelphia dentist providing both general and cosmetic dentistry services.

Source: http://liberationwellnessblog.com/author/rjwalicki/