subject: The Relationship Between Dental And Overall Health [print this page] Most people tend to dismiss their oral health as something which is a self contained aspect of your overall health. Your Palatine dentist knows better though. The truth is that there is a complex connection between the health of your teeth, gums, and mouth and the rest of your body. If you allow your oral health to decline there is a good chance that the repercussions from bad health could carry over into other parts of your body.
When you get an infection in your mouth, it can travel to other parts of the body. There has been a strong connection drawn between severe infections in the mouth and problems with kidneys, the liver, and other organs. There are also many times when an infection in the mouth can cause problems in the face and neck as the infection begins to travel through the system.
There have also been studies which have drawn a strong connection between heart problems and severe gum disease. When people allow their oral health to degrade to an extreme degree, they can quickly start to suffer from a number of other health problems. The dental problems are serious enough on their own, but when they begin to compound in the body with problems in the major organ systems, they can truly become life threatening problems.
There is also a connection between oral health and psychological and mental health. When people have very poor oral health it causes problems like severe bad breath and a very unattractive smile. This is very hard on a person's self image.
Healthy teeth are also critical for overall health because of the role they play in providing proper nutrition to the body. When people suffer from very poor oral health, their teeth can sometimes no longer properly chew all of the different types of food that they need in order to feed their body with a healthy diet. Severe gum disease, infected teeth, and other similar problems can leave a person unable to chew many types of food without suffering from intense pain. When this happens, the person suffering from the condition will instead often revert to eating the only foods which they can find tolerable. If this is allowed to go on for too long, it can lead to severe malnutrition. There is no system or part of the body which doesn't suffer when proper nutrients are not being introduced into the system.
