What dental health issues do we need to care about?
Caring about our health is one of the most important things anyone can do. Yet, one of the areas we tend to overlook is our dental health.
We often think we can ignore what happens inside our mouth if we just brush twice a day. Yet, caring for our mouths must be taken seriously since it’s the point of contact for foreign substances entering our bodies.
Why should we care about dental health?
There’s no point separating dental health from general health. If we care about our health, then we must care about dental health. It’s merely part of what we’re focused on in caring for ourselves.
As Reader’s Digest notes:
“Studies link oral inflammatory disease and elevated heart disease risk. According to the Canadian Academy of Periodontology, people with periodontal disease are at greater risk of heart disease and have twice the risk of having a fatal heart attack than people without periodontal disease.”
Further, data shows that gum disease can lead to cardiovascular disease – this is due to the increase in inflammation level throughout the body. And inflammation is one of the major risk factors for heart disease.
The general rule according to many health experts is that a healthy mouth is means a healthy body.
What can we do for a healthy mouth?
The easiest way to begin caring about dental health is to begin regular regimes. We should be brushing at least twice a day, with a good brush. It’s best to consult our dentists about what this means, but there are guides available. For example, WebMD suggests: a head that can reach all teeth easily, bristles with rounded tips, and brushes that have received a seal of approval from organisations.
Of course, equally important is brushing properly: this means not merely for a few seconds, but a few minutes. Some electric toothbrushes time themselves automatically, encouraging users to keep brushing until the brush stops rotating. This means we’re paying more, but we’re brushing properly.
Businesses themselves can encourage this by examining dental insurance plans. This may be reactive, rather than preventative, but it still means taking action to care about health. We must care about our health and this is an easy, rewarding way to do it. It might be inconvenient, but we can immediately see the difference if we take care of our mouths. It’s easy and barely takes time – annoyance should not be a reason to ignore health.