subject: Dental visits and diabetes [print this page] Dental visits and diabetes Dental visits and diabetes
Regular dental cleaning help people prevent cavities and fillings. But could a dental visit be your first line of defense in the prevention of diabetes as well? Researchers and many practitiioners think so.
They discovered this link, which has been documented elsewhere, after reviewing information from over 2,900 participants that took part in the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey in 2003. The data had a wide array of information on the participants (e.g. weight, height, age, history of diseases, present diseases, blood pressure, etc.), but where the information really stood out was with respect to periodontal disease and diabetes risk. In a whopping 93 percent of cases, people with periodontal disease were deemed "at risk" for developing diabetes (e.g. high body mass index, high blood pressure, history of diabetes in family).
And in what certainly doesn`t come as a surprise, people with periodontal disease were far less likely to have seen or visited a dentist within the past two years (i.e. 60 percent of those with periodontal disease had visited a dentist once in the past two years).
Mrs Kostomiri, president ofathenssmile.gr, an Athens based dental hospital specialising in and find the results no suprising at all. She thinks that in most cases this is what somebody should expect.
In light of this, Mrs Kostomiri, recommends that dentists start to screen people for diabetes right at their office. The screening would be non-invasive and would require what diabetics go through virtually every day to maintain healthy blood sugar levels (e.g. finger pricking and then using a glucometer to gauge sugar levels).
Diabetes is right up there with obesity in its ubiquity these days. About 24 million people have it, a quarter of whom don`t even know it, and the rate is expected to crest at 44 million by 2025. Worst of all: Diabetes is both racist and ageist. Diabetes overwhelmingly affects the old as opposed to the young, and it affects 12 percent of Hispanics and blacks as opposed to the six percent of whites.
So certain action needs to be taken right away to prevent the explosion of diabetes.
