The Oral-Systemic Connection: How Gum Disease Promotes Inflammation in the Body
An oral-systemic connection is a term that describes how oral health affects disease processes that occur in other parts of the body. This connection has started gaining much more attention in recent years, as medical research uncovers increasing evidence that oral health has a strong influence on general health, and on specifically defined disease processes. In particular, research has focused on how gum disease provokes an inflammatory response that can affect many other parts of the body and influence the progression of other diseases.
From Heart Disease to Diabetes
Medical research points to links between gum disease and other diseases such as diabetes, cardiovascular disease, and even Alzheimer’s. Gum disease makes it harder to control blood sugar and may increase the risk of heart attack and stroke.
The question is, how is this happening? How does an oral infection have such wide-ranging effects in other parts of the body? The reasons why gum disease has these effects isn’t well-established; one possibility is that the oral infection promotes inflammation in other parts of the body.
It has been established that the first step in the process occurs as a result of gum disease, in particular, periodontal disease. When oral bacteria gain access to deep gum tissue, there’s an increasing risk that the bacteria will eventually gain access to the bloodstream. The more advanced the gum disease is, the more likely this is to occur. The risk increases even more if the gum disease is untreated.
Infection and Inflammation
Once bacteria enter the bloodstream, they can potentially spread to and infect other parts of the body. The infection may be sub-clinical, meaning it doesn’t cause any detectable symptoms, but the infection still has consequences. One of these consequences is inflammation, a process that occurs when the immune system is activated to fight against infection, and in some cases as a response to processes that occur naturally in the body.
Part of the inflammatory response involves the production of cells and chemicals that damage bacterial cells—but they can also damage our own cells too. This means that in the presence of an ongoing infection, even a sub-clinical one, the production of inflammatory cells and chemicals can cause damage to the body over time.
This may account for some of the long-term effects of the oral-systemic connection. Inflammation is a known risk factor for cardiovascular disease, for instance, and it may be that inflammation caused by gum disease serves to increase that level of risk.