Dentist: How Regular Trips Will Keep You Healthy

Everyone knows that regular visits to the dentist are the best way to ensure the upkeep of a beautiful healthy smile. Fewer people realize that those visits are also an important key in maintaining your overall health. While a dental professional inspects your teeth to check for any signs of tooth decay and to make sure you’ve been flossing, he or she is also examining your entire mouth for the first signs of some very serious diseases.

Periodontitis, or “gum disease,” is the most common disease that your dentist can help you prevent. When good oral hygiene is not practiced, the gums and other tissues surrounding the teeth can become inflamed and infected. This disease of the mouth can lead to eventual tooth and bone loss, as well as the need for expensive medications and painful surgery. The idea of these effects on the mouth is frightening, but the results of gum disease are not limited to the oral cavity alone.

Gum infections can lead to the inflammation of blood vessels which can greatly hinder your vascular functions. This can lead to heart disease. Gum infections can also spread in ways that adversely affect your lungs, kidneys, and liver.

It doesn’t stop there. Pregnant women who suffer from gum disease are more likely to deliver premature or underweight babies, and low birth weight has been linked to many health problems that can follow a child through its entire life. The effects of gum disease are far reaching, but in its early stages it is highly reversible and treatable.

If all of that isn’t enough to make you grab your calendar and make an appointment with your dentist, then consider the other major disease your checkups are designed to detect and prevent; oral cancer. Oral cancer is one of the most treatable cancers. When caught in its earliest stages, it has a cure rate of almost ninety percent. For those who miss early detection, the outlook is not so good.

Your dentist spends every day looking at mouths. He or she knows what a healthy mouth looks like. Their professional eyes will be able to detect the slightest abnormality or discoloration in your mouth that could be a sign of something serious. Many of the early symptoms of oral cancer are not accompanied by pain and were they present in your mouth, you would not know to see a doctor to have them looked at. Regular dental checkups are the best route to preventing this terrible disease.

The fact that dental insurance is not always offered to employees as a part of their medical benefits package shows that many still consider dentistry to be a more superfluous medicine, concerning itself primarily with personal appearance. This is of course, very wrong. Your dentist is instrumental both in making sure you have a great smile, and in preventing disease so as to ensure you get to share that smile with the world for a long time to come.