Reduce Your Risk of Heart Attacks by 24%
Reduce Your Risk of a Stroke by 13%
These are some impressive numbers if they are true, and depending on what you have to do to achieve that, right?
What if I told you that these claims were made in an American Heart Association meeting in Orlando, Florida in November of 2011. These claims were made after a study of 100,000 patients concluded. The study followed 100,000 patients over a 7 year period, at the Veterans General Hospital in Taipei, Taiwan. So what did the study find?
The study found that people that had their teeth scraped and cleaned by a dentist or a dental hygienist had a 13% reduction in strokes and 24% reduction in heart attacks compared to those that did not. These results were obtained by those that had their teeth scraped and cleaned at least once a year! The frequency is also very important. People that achieved these results had the procedure done at least once a year.
So what does heart disease have to do with teeth cleaning and professional scaling? Well, it appears that professional tooth scaling and cleaning reduces inflammation caused by bacteria growth that can lead to heart disease.
So what is teeth scaling? Scaling is the process of removing dental tartar from the surfaces of the teeth. On occasion, if you have gum disease or gum pocketing, you might need to do deep cleaning. That means that gum pockets around your teeth deepened which means that tartar deposits have formed under your gum line. In most cases it is a very easy process unless you have serious gum disease in which case it may be a little more complicated. The study in question though did not even get into gum disease. The moral of the story is that if you keep your teeth and mouth free of bacteria and inflammation you will reduce your chances of heart attack by 24% and stroke by 13%. That is easy, I can do that!
