So, it’s incredibly important for people to maintain their oral health.

Unfortunately, people neglect their oral health for a variety of reasons: anxiety, fear, embarrassment. Another reason is that problems like gum disease don’t necessarily cause pain – and patients assume that their oral health is in good standing as long as they’re pain-free, so they don’t see twice-yearly dental exams as a priority.

Aspen Dental’s approach focuses on providing comprehensive care, which means addressing any immediate problems that may be causing pain, but also recommending treatment for long-lasting good health.

Back to Basics
Dr. Arnow explained that good oral hygiene at home is essential to help keep periodontal disease from becoming more serious or recurring. Even with the great new technologies that dentists have available, Dr. Arnow urged patients to remember the basics:

• Brush your teeth at least twice a day to help remove food and plaque on both natural teeth and dentures and floss at least once daily to remove plaque between teeth and below the gum line.
• Limit your intake of sweets, especially sugared, carbonated beverages.
• Eat more fruits and vegetables.
• Drink more water.
• And of course, have your mouth examined regularly by your dentist for signs of gum disease or infection.
• A Necessity for Denture Wearers, too

Dr. Arnow pointed out that good oral hygiene is equally as important for individuals with dentures, who should brush and rinse their dentures daily and clean with denture cleanser.

Denture-wearers should clean their gums to avoid plaque build-up that can irritate the tissue under dentures. Thoroughly clean dentures at night to avoid bacteria growth.

Another important tip for denture-wearers – pay attention to how much denture adhesive you use. If you’re going through more than one tube of denture cream every three weeks, your dentures may not fit properly and need replacement.

The American Dental Association recommends that dentures be replaced every 5 to 7 years, but in Dr. Arnow’s experience, many patients wait much longer than that, which can cause irritation or sores in the mouth over time.

Source:  ABC.com

Source: ABC7

Periodontal Disease and Smokers - Webinar by Dr. Richard Nejat

Periodontal disease is more prevalent and more severe in smokers than in nonsmokers. The host response in smokers is altered by a number of factors including increased gingival crevicular fluid, adhesion molecules and genetics. In addition, smokers are poor healers compared to nonsmokers and their response to periodontal therapy can be compromised which can result in continued progression of periodontal disease, or the need for more treatment.

Rheumatoid arthritis is a chronic disease that causes pain, stiffness, swelling, and limitation in the motion and function of multiple joints. Though joints are the principal body parts affected by RA, inflammation can develop in other organs as well. An estimated 1.3 million Americans have RA, and the disease typically affects women twice as often as men.

Researchers have long associated periodontal disease, or gum inflammation, and bacteria in the gastrointestinal tract with RA, although no specific bacteria have ever been identified by researchers as the bacteria to target as possible therapy. Nevertheless, studies have suggested that bacteria or bacterial products contribute to RA and other autoimmune diseases.

Led by co-principle investigators Steven Abramson, MD, and Dan Littman, MD, PhD, researchers from New York University’s Langone Medical Center, aimed to determine whether bacteria in the human mouth and intestines can trigger RA. They used DNA amplification technology to identify what type of bacteria exist in the mouths and intestines of study participants, which included eight people with newly developed RA, three people with psoriatic arthritis, and nine people without these diseases – who were considered healthy.

Previous studies have relied on traditional bacteria cultures, which are only able to identify 20 percent of bacterial species in the human body because of the inability to find the right nutrients to grow the culture, which highlights the uniqueness of this study. “By sending our samples for a deep DNA sequencing, we’re able to identify 100 percent of the bacteria that are present,” says Jose U. Scher, MD, director of New York University’s new Microbiome Center for Rheumatology and Autoimmunity and one of the lead investigators in the study. “So we’re taking a huge step forward by not missing 80 percent of the bacteria. Taking that step will allow us to identify bacteria that are related to rheumatoid arthritis.”

Although it’s too early for this to be applied in the diagnosis of rheumatic diseases in a clinical health care setting, the research is already yielding results that distinguish people with RA from those without. Through this study, researchers were able to identify an over-abundance of the prevotellaceae family of bacteria in the intestinal fecal samples of participants who were newly diagnosed with RA—and had not been treated with drugs for the disease—when compared to those participants in the study who were identified as healthy.

Additionally, researchers found that mouth samples of participants with RA exhibited an overabundance of the porphyromonas genus compared to healthy controls. To examine bacteria in the mouth, researchers studied the gums of participants with RA or psoriatic arthritis, and healthy individuals. When examining the gums of these participants, researchers noted that 78 percent of the examined sites bled during examination in participants with RA, which was a significantly higher percentage than those with psoriatic arthritis (38 percent) and those participants identified as healthy (12 percent). Overall, 66 percent of participants with RA had moderate gum disease – compared to 25 percent of the participants with psoriatic arthritis and 12 percent of the participants in the healthy group.

Additional studies by the group have demonstrated that specific microbes induce the differentiation of Th17 cells in the intestine. There is already strong genetic and therapy-based evidence that pro-inflammatory Th17 cells and anti-inflammatory regulatory T cells (Treg) have critical roles in autoimmune diseases, including RA, psoriatic arthritis, and Crohn’s disease.

“The basic premise is that there are different oral and gut bacteria that activate Th17 cells to promote inflammation,” Dr. Scher explains. “Our hypotheses are that characterization of Th17-inducing microbes in the human intestine will provide insight into disease pathogenesis, and that directed manipulation of the gut microbiota will result in the alteration of arthritis biomarkers, including Th17/Treg balance.”

The next step for the team is a study in which 90 participants with RA will be subdivided into three arms. The first two arms will be given antibiotics for a two-month period, and the third arm will be given placebo. The researchers believe that by modifying the microbial flora with antibiotics, they can identify molecular mechanisms by which RA-associated bacteria affect Th17 and Treg homeostasis and thereby develop new strategies to diminish or even prevent the inflammatory process that leads to chronic destructive arthritis.

The American College of Rheumatology is an international professional medical society that represents more than 8,000 rheumatologists and rheumatology health professionals around the world. Its mission is to advance rheumatology. The ACR/ARHP Annual Scientific Meeting is the premier meeting in rheumatology. For more information about the meeting, visit www.rheumatology.org/education. Follow the meeting on twitter by using the official hashtag: #ACR2010.

Source:  American College of Rheumatology

Gastro-esophaegeal Reflux Disease, lactose intolerance, gum disease, chronic respiratory tract infections, lung and liver diseases, to name just a few.

C.D. Dwarakanath, periodontist, and President of the Indian society of Periodontology, explains that the causes could be both physiological and pathological. “Physiological causes can be easily attended to. There is nothing that good oral hygiene cannot take care of in such a case,” he says. However, people tend to ignore bad odour in themselves, or just get used to it over a period of time.

A good dentist can pick up a number of diseases just in the mouth, says KSGA Nasser, principal, Government Dental College. Often patients come in with complaints of caries and bad breath and are asked to get tests done for diabetes or cardio vascular disease.

Dr. Nasser says the basic cause however is insufficient brushing of teeth. “Not brushing teeth at night leads to these problems. Food particles remain in between the teeth, form a thin layer of plaque, which then gets calcified, forming tartar. Gums begin to recede and the result is bad breath,” he adds.

The second most common problem dentists see is gum disease, according to V.Rangarajan, prosthodontist. The primary reason is also gum disease that can be treated surgically and with drugs. How long a treatment lasts depending on the severity of the gum disease, he adds.

If the cause is only bad oral hygiene, brushing the teeth and following prescribed norms will help, Dr. Dwarakanath adds.

“In such cases we advice the patient to avoid odorous foods, smoking and recommend brushing twice a day, with rinsing. A mouthwash/freshener may be prescribed for temporary relief,” he says.

A visit to the dentist twice a year is a must, but is rarely followed in the country, says Dr. Dwarakanath.

While this will take care of basic oral hygiene problems, remember that the dentist can also look between the teeth to indicate further investigation for more serious conditions.

Source: The Hindu

The study doesn’t prove that dental care directly improves the heart health of women by lowering the risk of conditions like heart attack and stroke, and dental care seemed to have no benefit for men at all in terms of heart disease, but even so, the study authors were still impressed by the findings.

The study, which was released online Sept. 29 in advance of publication in an upcoming print issue of Health Economics, analyzed the medical records of nearly 7,000 people aged 44 to 88 who had participated in another study. The data from that study had been collected between 1996 and 2004.

The authors of the new study came to their conclusions after reviewing the data and adjusting the numbers so they wouldn’t be thrown off by large or small numbers of people who were, among other things, overweight or users of alcohol and tobacco.

“We think the findings reflect differences in how men and women develop cardiovascular disease,” study co-author Dr. Stephen Brown, a obstetrician/gynecologist resident at West Virginia University, said in a news release from the University of California at Berkeley. “Other studies suggest that estrogen has a protective effect against heart disease because it helps prevent the development of atherosclerosis. It’s not until women hit menopause, around age 50 to 55, that they start catching up with men.”

Dr. Maria Emanuel Ryan, a professor of oral biology and pathology at Stony Brook University in Stony Brook, N.Y., said she has seen signs of a link between dental care and heart disease in her own practice. The study, she said, “confirms the findings of some of the studies conducted in the insurance industry, which suggest that the medical costs for cardiac care and diabetes are reduced in patients who have regular dental visits.”

There does appear to be a connection between gum disease, in particular, and heart disease. Research suggests that chronic inflammation causes heart disease, Ryan noted, and gum disease “is the most common chronic inflammatory condition in the world. Unfortunately, periodontitis — or gum disease — is often a silent disease that goes undetected and untreated.”

Here is a list of important tips to prevent gum disease.

myFOXDetroit.com – According to realage.com , doctors already know good hygiene helps lower your chances of heart disease. Now there’s evidence that brushing and flossing can lower the chance of developing neck cancer.

A recent study says people with periodontis, a gum disease that breaks down the bones that hold the roots of teeth in place, had a higher risk of head and neck cancer.

Scientists at the University of New York in Buffalo analyzed both the oral and lung health of nearly 14,000 participants from the Third National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey. They discovered that patients who had a history of COPD had more periodontal attachment loss (loose pockets surrounding the tooth) than did patients who did not have COPD. More specifically, they found that patients who had a mean attachment loss of 3 millimeters or greater were at a higher risk of developing COPD than were patients whose mean attachment loss was less than 3 millimeters.

Dr. Frank Scannapieco, D.M.D., Ph.D., suggests that there is a possibility that bacteria from the gums can travel to the lungs and contribute to lung infection.  He also suggests that there is a possibility that the inflammation in gum disease can somehow contribute to the inflammation in lung disease, which may affect the airways by limiting air passage to and from the lungs.

What can people do to reduce their risk? Here are some helpful tips:

• Quit smoking
• Reduce dietary sugars
• Eat a healthy diet
  
• Brush and floss daily
• See your dentist regularly

Source:  About.com