Do you take great care of your teeth? What about your gums? Your gum health is just as important as the rest of your smile. In fact, your gums do a lot more than people give them credit for—including warding off serious health conditions like heart disease and strokes.
Learn more about gum health, gum disease, and how it can affect your heart health in this week’s post!
What is Periodontal Disease?
Gum disease, and its advanced stage, periodontal disease, are infections of the areas surrounding your teeth, or the soft gum tissues and bone. This can occur when the gums around the teeth become infected, inflamed, or otherwise damaged from overwhelming plaque, hardened tartar, dental bacteria buildup. In most cases, patients develop gum disease because of poor oral hygiene, but there are other factors that could cause it as well. Sometimes genetics plays a role in its development or outside conditions like diabetes.
What is Cardiovascular (Heart) Disease?
Cardiovascular disease, commonly known as heart disease, can be identified in many ways—but the main thing to remember is that it affects the flow of blood and oxygen in your body. You may experience these problems if you have heart disease: high blood pressure, tissue inflammation, heart valve blockage, increased cholesterol, and many other bodily issues.
Many patients have high chances of developing heart disease because of a hereditary history, although you may be able to prevent it altogether if you practice healthy ways of taking care of yourself. That means from your diet, to exercise, and even oral hygiene affect your health.
How Are These Conditions Connected?
What these two conditions have in common is the inflammation that happens when they arise. When you develop gum disease, your gums can become swollen, inflamed, and begin to recede. After gum recession starts, the plaque and dental bacteria that is in your mouth can easily enter the blood stream without having healthy gums to block them from the rest of your body. The bacteria and dental debris can enter through those holes in your smile and eventually cause plaque buildup in the arteries.
The same process could happen if the dental debris and bacteria enter through the holes in your smile and attack the brain through the bloodstream. Then the chances of having a stoke is increased as well.
If you suffer from gum disease, it’s essential to seek the appropriate treatment as soon as possible. Without the necessary periodontal treatment, your gum disease will likely get much worse. It’s best to contact your local dentist for assistance right away!
About Our Office
Here at Zumbro Family Dental, we want to keep our patient’s health up to par—and not just their smile. We work to keep your teeth and gums healthy to keep the whole body healthy! We offer a wide range of treatments for gum disease, and our skilled dentist has years of experiencing working with patients to improve their oral and overall health simultaneously.
