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Brushing Teeth Morning and Night Could Prevent Heart Disease

Researchers say the number of times you brush your teeth may be important to prevent heart disease. Individuals who brush their teeth twice have a 70 percent lower risk of developing inflammation that can lead to clogged arteries and heart disease compared to those who brush once a day or not at all, even after adjusting for other heart disease risk factors.

Gum disease from poor oral hygiene produces inflammation in the body that can also lead to other inflammatory diseases. Even when researchers took into account obesity, smoking, and other lifestyle factors, tooth brushing twice a day was still found to lower the chances of developing heart disease.

The findings that brushing your teeth twice a day can prevent heart disease comes from a University College London study that analyzed data among over 11,000 adults who took part in the Scottish Healthy Survey. Information gathered included tooth brushing habits, number of annual dental visits, smoking habits, and physical activity levels in addition to collecting blood samples that measure inflammation in the body.

After adjusting for family history of heart disease, body mass index, age, sex, visits to the dentist, high blood pressure, and history of diabetes, CRP and fibrinogen levels that are markers of inflammation were higher in individuals who brushed their teeth less than twice a day, linking heart disease to brushing teeth less than twice a day. Though the risk of heart disease was low, there was a distinct association between less frequent attention to oral hygiene and risk of heart disease.

The study does not suggest that poor dental health from lack of frequent tooth brushing causes heart disease. According to Professor Richard Watt from University College London, “our results confirmed and further strengthened the suggested association between oral hygiene and the risk of cardiovascular disease – furthermore inflammatory markers were significantly associated with a very simple measure of poor oral health behaviour. Future experimental studies will be needed to confirm whether the observed association between oral health behaviour and cardiovascular disease is in fact causal or merely a risk marker”.

The findings are not the first to show that attention to brushing teeth can keep diseases at bay. The Journal of Periodontology published a study April 2010 connecting periodontal disease to rheumatoid arthritis. Other findings from the American Society of Periodontology have shown a link between heart disease, diabetes, and Alzheimer’s disease from poor oral hygiene. The newest study shows that brushing teeth twice a day could reduce the chances of developing clogged arteries that can lead to heart disease.

BMJ

American Academy of Periodontology

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