..... As a start, it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out that people who don’t take good care of their gums and teeth are also not likely to be following most of the other healthy lifestyle practices known to reduce the risk of chronic health problems, such as eating a healthy diet, for example, or exercising regularly.
..... Equally important, though, the underlying pathological causes for chronic health conditions (including gum disease) might be very much the same for all of them, such as, for example, chronic inflammation.
..... Many health experts believe, you see, that chronic inflammation is a major factor in the development of heart disease, strokes, and diabetes, and since gum disease is a chronic inflammatory condition, gum disease might also, these experts argue, either produce or at the very least aggravate other pre-existing chronic health conditions.
..... As my sons’ girl-friends used to say, though, “Whatever”, meaning that hey, it doesn’t really matter how you explain the links between gum disease and other conditions, in the end, you still want to stop gum disease early if only for the fact that you don’t want to spend your last few years sipping gruel for dinner while your wife digs into her steak (although not my wife, of course, because she’s a committed vegetarian, so it’s more likely that while I sipped supper, she’d be digging into a breast of tofu, something that I wouldn’t envy in the least).
..... Anyway, the good news is that it’s relatively easy to deal with gum disease - brush and floss, brush and floss, brush and floss.
..... But hey, dudes, even if you brush and floss religiously, you should also still get regular check-ups from your dentist in which you get your gums attended to and your teeth cleaned, and during which you also get told a bunch of bad jokes.
..... But hey, the added bonus is that you also get to leaf through two-decade old copies of waiting room magazines, so you get a chance to read again about budding new superstars like Olivia Newton-John and Madonna and Elvis. Cool, eh.
Dr. Art Hister can be heard on CKNW and other Corus Radio Network stations on House Calls on Saturdays at 10 AM, as well as seen on Global TV news on Saturday mornings at 9:20. |
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