The Whole Tooth: What Dentists Can Tell About Your Health

I’m always fascinated by police-procedural shows, especially when they find a decomposing body and manage to reconstruct a victim’s entire life and death based on her teeth and dental records. “Judging by these abrasions,” the medical examiner says, “I can tell that she was left-handed, chewed on her pen caps, and enjoyed the opera.” Case closed.

If someone were to analyze my own teeth, I wonder what he’d determine …he’d probably figure out that I have a predilection for candy, don’t chew gum, and wore braces as a child. But I assume my teeth would probably show that I am an otherwise extremely healthy individual. Your dentist can look at your teeth and tell a lot more about your health than whether or not you floss. We already know how pivotal flossing and gum care are, but the teeth themselves are important, too. Many health problems manifest themselves in our teeth—and what’s going on in someone’s mouth can reveal much about what’s going on in the rest of her body.
Loose Lips Become Broken Hips
Loosening teeth can indicate the onset of osteoporosis. When the jaw’s bone density decreases, the teeth themselves can lose their anchor and fall out. If a dentist notices a patient (usually elderly and female) with loose teeth, detached gums, or dentures that begin to fit poorly, he’ll often recommend that she be screened for the disease. Drugs to retain bone density can help, but women with osteoporosis should also be vigilant about brushing and flossing, since gum disease can speed up and compound the process of tooth loss.
Tooth loss is strongly associated with chronic kidney disease as well. In a study published in the September 2008 Journal of Periodontology, adult participants who had lost all their teeth were found to be more likely to suffer from renal disease. Although the data is too new to show exactly how the two afflictions are related, doctors theorize that the link seems to be the chronic inflammation that characterizes both conditions. It’s well known that patients with uncontrolled diabetes have much higher instances of gum disease, oral infections, cavities, and other dental problems, and because diabetes lowers the immune system’s response to infection, extra bacteria in the mouth have a better chance of seeping into the bloodstream and infecting the rest of the body.