It’s easy to grasp the importance of regular oral hygiene to avoid mouth based issues like tooth decay and bleeding gums. But when we stretch the discussion to whether regular flossing can lower our risk of a heart attack, understanding the link can get a bit fuzzy. After all, where’s the connection between our mouths and our hearts anyway? As you’ll see by the end of our discussion, having a healthy mouth is a great start toward having a healthy body. Understanding the mouth/body connection… In 2006, a team of researchers lead by Steven R dental handpiece. Gundry, M.D., of the International Heart and Lung Institute in Palm Springs, California did a study on 300 people who had moderate risk of heart disease. The way the researchers determined if the people were at risk of heart disease was by measuring a common biomarker called C reactive protein (CRP). CRP is a component of our blood that responds to the level of inflammation in the body. Doctors and researchers have found that CRP provides a better gauge of risk of heart disease than other common markers like blood cholesterol. In the study, the researchers decided to only test what they called ‘lifestyle modification’. The participants were simply asked to floss their teeth at least every other day. That’s it! In other words, researchers didn’t have the participants change the foods they ate or the amount of exercise they did. Just floss at least every other day. After 6 months, all 300 people had their C reactive protein levels tested again. The CRP levels for all 300 participants had dropped under the threshold that made them ‘at risk’ of heart disease! While that fact alone is awesome, the researchers then gave the world an important piece of information. Researchers instructed the participants to stop flossing. And when their CRP levels were tested again, guess what? Everyone’s CRP levels had gone back up into the ‘at risk’ levels. It’s all about inflammation… So, what does this tell us about the role of the mouth in the creation or destruction of the health of the whole body? We all know that gum disease is a global silent epidemic and is the #1 cause of tooth loss in adults. When the bad bugs implicated with gum disease get established along and under the gum line, the body reacts to this bacterial infection the same way the body responds to any infection, increase inflammation to promote a healing response dental supplies. But the problem doesn’t stay in the mouth. After as little as 9 days of exposure, the bad bugs can begin to travel throughout the body via the tiny capillaries in the gum tissue. This is why we talk so much about whether your gums bleed when flossed. If you have any ‘bleed points’ (aka gums bleed when flossed), that means that any bad bugs in that pocket have access to the bloodstream. They can and do swim upstream. dental implant machine