The Importance of Good Oral Care to Your Overall Body Health
Having a winning smile is not all there is to good oral health care. A lot of dental issues go beyond what is easily visible by the unsuspecting eye and would usually require a closer and more thorough inspection by a dentist.
Professional oral health care providers, such as in https://www.dsofcarrollton.com/, recommend an average of two visits to your dentist every year. This can go higher, however, depending on how serious your oral conditions are. Unfortunately, many people associate dental visits as costly and unnecessary and thus hold off on the visits until the very last minute. By then, the pain is intolerable, the damage is severe, and the cost for repair burns deeper into the wallet.
If only for the principle of preemption being much better than the cure, you might as well make you and your family’s oral health care a top priority.
Oral Health Issues as Symptoms of Underlying Conditions
Not a lot of people know that oral health is actually another window to the body’s overall health. There are, in fact, certain diseases or conditions that manifest their symptoms through dental or oral issues. For example, frequently reoccurring gum disease could be a symptom of diabetes. This is because diabetes increases your risk for infections, and your gum is at high risk of this, specifically.
Meanwhile, osteoporosis, or the weakening of the bones, could also cause tooth loss or periodontal bone loss. If you think your teeth have gotten weaker recently, easily prone to damage and breakage, you might want to consider a more serious underlying cause to it.
Oral Health Issues as Cause of Other Health Conditions
On the flip side, poor oral health can also impact your overall body health. For example, poor oral hygiene can cause endocarditis or the infection of the inner lining of the heart chambers. This can be caused by germs and bacteria build up in the mouth that then passes through the bloodstream until it reaches the heart valves, settling and doing damage there.
Other possible locations these oral bacteria and germs can travel to is the lungs. Once it’s there, it can cause pneumonia, as well as a host of other diseases.
In the case of dental alignment issues such as TMJ disorder, the pinched network of facial nerves can cause a variety of pain and discomforts throughout the body, including facial pain, tension headache, tinnitus, shoulder and back pain, and even gastrointestinal issues due to improper chewing and digestion.
All of these are but a few examples of the far-reaching impact of oral health. This is why it is highly important that you prioritize this, not only for yourself but for the rest of your family too. Whether it be general family dentistry, pediatric dentistry, or even cosmetic and orthodontics, it would be ideal that you have a trusted dental practice you can turn to.
