Mouth Care: Why It Improves More Than Just Your Smile
June 15, 2017
When people think about health, it is common to focus on nutrition, exercise, sleep, and stress management. But did know that your mouth health is also critical to your overall health?
Bacteria in the mouth affect our overall immune system and can lead to other health problems. Three hours after your teeth are professionally cleaned; they will be covered by a film of protein from your saliva. Within a few days bacteria that can cause disease accumulate on this film, which is around the teeth and under the crevice by the gum. They then create a protective covering over themselves that is difficult to penetrate.1
The body’s immune system, in its efficient way, sounds an alarm. White blood cells (WBCs) in the immune system recognize patterns on the bad bacteria and alert other WBCs in the blood vessels.2 This alerting is done by messengers (cytokines) which stimulate other WBCs to migrate through the walls of blood vessels and move toward the bad bacteria. This movement is the start of inflammation, not just in the mouth, but potentially throughout your body.
The combination of WBCs releasing chemicals to get rid of bad bacteria, the bacteria releasing toxins, and messengers (cytokines) coordinating the immunes system’s response results in an inflamed area in the mouth. Generally, an immune system’s WBC patrol can keep bad bacteria from leaving the infected area. However, one’s immune system is frequently overwhelmed dealing with the challenges such as the flu, allergies, a cold, or other illnesses. Bacteria then move through gum tissue, enter the blood vessels where the WBCs migrated from, and move to other organs and parts of the body. In this way bacteria can move to knees or hips, arthritis areas, and cause childbirth complications. Arteries to the heart may fill in with plaque from inflammation caused by the immune system’s response to bad bacteria in the mouth.
Bad oral bacteria can negatively affect our heath as significantly as poor nutrition, lack of exercise, excessive stress, and poor sleep habits. Fortunately, mouth care can be easily implemented with a change of habits to deter a host of potentially serious health problems.
1Oral Microbiiology, 5th Edition, Marsh, Martin
2 Human Physiology, 13th Edition,, Widmaier, Raff, Strang
