Brushing teeth does not only make your breath smell good but it also prevents your heart from going bad. (Image via DW)

Brushing your teeth saves your heart: Study

Alfonsus Adi Putra
Editorial
Opinion
Dec 15, 2019
3507
Are you lazy to brush your teeth? If yes, then you should change the unhealthy habit now! It might save your heart. At least, it is according to a study from Ewha Woman's University College of Medicine in Seoul, capital of South Korea (S. Korea).

The study revealed that people brushing their teeth three times a day are less likely to develop atrial fibrillation or heart failure.

The S. Korean researchers monitored the data on 161,286 people with national health coverage and no history of atrial fibrillation, heart failure or other cardiovascular diseases. They had one routine medical exam between 2003 and 2004.

After following these people for 10.5 years, 4,911 people, or 3% of the study population, developed atrial fibrillation and 7,971 people, or 4.9%, developed heart failure.

Atrial fibrillation disrupts electrical impulses of the heart’s upper chamber are chaotic, causing the heart to quiver instead of normally contracting. It disrupts the blood flow to the lower chamber, clotting the arteries that lead to stroke.

While in heart failure, the heart muscle becomes too weak to pump the blood for the body.

Then, what is the correlation with oral hygiene? Unattended oral hygiene causes bacteria to seep into the bloodstream, causing inflammation. Now, inflammation is one of the main causes of the two deadly cardiovascular diseases.

Oral hygiene connection with these cardiovascular diseases persisted even among other factors.

Therefore, it is pointed out that people who brush their teeth three times a day are 12 percent less likely to develop heart failure and 10 percent less chance to develop atrial fibrillation. Dental cleaning is also contributed to 7 percent of heart failure prevention. Pay attention that losing 22 or more teeth exposes you to heart failure by 32 percent!

The journal was later published in the European Journal of Preventive Cardiology.

While the research has several limitations, such as lack of lab test and no x-ray result that showed these participants had periodontal diseases, the research certainly contributed to show a strong correlation between oral hygiene and cardiovascular diseases.

Source: https://bit.ly/2tfiDYZ

Health , Medical , Hygiene , Prevention , Treatment , Research , Study , Oral , Cardiovascular , Terminal