causing them, May Ahmad Beydoun, a staff scientist in the epidemiology and population sciences lab at the National Institute on Aging cautions.
“We don’t know causality,” she says, “because we don’t know if there is something else that is confounding the relationship between gum disease and the outcome.”
Beydoun led a study published last year in the “Journal of Alzheimer’s Disease” that showed older adults with signs of gum disease were more likely to develop dementia during up to 26 years of follow-up than those with healthier mouths.
Researchers have theories about how problems with oral health may lead to other illnesses, Demmer says. But they’ve yet to be proven.
The prevailing theory is that systemic inflammation is the thread that ties them all together. One possibility is that an imbalance of good and bad bacteria in the mouth sends toxins into the bloodstream, triggering an immune response that creates low-grade, systemic inflammation. Inflammation is believed to play a role in the development of heart disease, stroke and dementias, including vascular dementia and Alzheimer’s disease.
Another theory, according to Demmer, has to do with the beneficial organisms in the mouth and gut needed to transform dietary nitrates – found in foods such as leafy vegetables – into nitric oxide, which helps maintain good blood vessel health and lower blood pressure. As people age, there may not be enough good bacteria to properly convert nitrates into nitric oxide. High blood pressure boosts dementia risk and is one of the leading causes of heart disease and stroke.
Tooth Decay: Fight It, Stop It & Prevent It Naturally
Some of the harmful bacteria may be coming from the gut, not the mouth, she adds. Researchers have found the more severe a person’s gum disease, the higher the presence of Helicobacter pylori, the bacteria that causes ulcers and lives in the digestive tract. Beydoun believes H. pylori may also play a role in the development of dementia.
She recently led a study published in “Molecular Psychiatry” that found an increased risk for Alzheimer’s disease and other dementias among middle-aged and older men with high levels of H. pylori. Beydoun led another study published in the journal “Alzheimer’s & Dementia” that found an increased dementia risk among older adults with gum disease who had high levels of H. pylori. She hopes to investigate the connections more in future studies.
It’s also possible that poor oral health may be worsening other health conditions, but not initiating them. If so, “it’s probably making a slow