How can bad dental health cause heart disease?
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There are good germs and bad germs.
Poor dental health allows some kinds of bad germs to make more bad germs.
Some of those bad germs can get into your blood, and reach your heart, and cause problems.
Bacteria are like tiny bugs that can crawl into the tiny tubes in your gums called capillaries. those tubes lead to bigger tubes called arteries and veins, or the “highway” that transports the bugs. Your blood carries them from the capillaries to the bigger tubes all the way to the heart. Bacteria in the heart introduces a host of problems, including heart disease. So basically, the gums provided a “door” into the otherwise clean blood stream.
Because poor dental can cause systematic inflammation. Systematic means it can (or has) spread through your whole body. What else spreads through your whole body and circulates directly through your heart millions of times in your life? You guessed it your blood.
I looked after a guy in his early 20’s once who had infected wisdom teeth leading the endocarditis (bacterial growth on a heart value) that had then caused a stroke. It’s bad news.
Aside from all the stuff about infection and inflammation….. Your oral microbiome is essential in your production of nitric oxide, which is an important part of circulatory health.
It’s necessary to relax and widen blood vessels and lower blood pressure.
That’s why you shouldn’t use anti bacterial mouth washes daily.
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