Diabetes and Periodontal Disease
It's important for your dentist to know if you have diabetes, and how you're controlling it. Good control of your diabetes affects your oral health as well as your overall health.
Diabetics tend to be less resistant to infection than non-diabetics, have more fragile bones, and take longer to heal after an operation.
An oral infection can make diabetes worse, which makes the infection worse, which makes the diabetes worse - and so on into a major medical problem.
Diabetics develop severe gum disease more often, too, especially over the age of 40. Once gum inflammation - gingivitis - sets in, it can erupt into periodontal disease or even infection in the jaw. In undiagnosed or uncontrolled diabetics, this could mean tooth loss.
How to hang on to your teeth?
Practice preventive dentistry and follow the medication, diet, and meal schedules recommended by your physician. This, with balanced rest and exercise, will bolster your resistance to disease, including oral infections and cavities.
If you're taking insulin injections, you may want to schedule appointments around your medication times. The stress of an examination or procedure can change the way your body uses insulin. Your dentist will want to be prepared to help you in case you have a reaction. And let him or her know if you are taking any other medications. Drug interactions can be serious.
You may want to have your gums examined (and have a dental cleaning) by a dental hygienist more often than twice a year - just to make sure nothing suspicious gets started.
And on the home front, good dental hygiene - controlling plaque, the invisible bacterial film that undermines teeth - is crucial. Home care rules to live by: brush at least twice a day and floss at least once a day. The more, the better.
+Jim Du Molin is a leading Internet search expert helping individuals and families connect with the right dentist in their area. Visit his author page.
Gum Disease and Early Diabetes Detection
In many cases it's the dentist - and not the physician - who has the first opportunity to detect diabetes early, because diabetics are especially prone to dental health problems.
Swollen, tender, receding and bleeding gums, loose teeth, and a sore tongue may not just be signs of poor dental hygiene. They may be danger signals for diabetes, too.
If you have any of these symptoms, you may be one of the estimated 11 million people in North America who already have diabetes, or you may be one of the 600,000 who will be diagnosed this year.
Diabetes occurs when a gland called the pancreas fails to produce sufficient amounts of the hormone, insulin, to regulate blood sugar levels. In other words: Diabetics have too little insulin and too much sugar in their blood.
When this happens, the body tissue can't convert the sugar it needs into energy. The blood stream then fills with this unused sugar and the result is diabetes - a disease medical journals often describe as the "forever" disease.
A serious illness which respects neither age, sex, race nor income level, diabetes is the leading cause of blindness in people 20 to 65 years old and can lead to kidney failure, heart attacks and even death.
But outside the dental community, few people realize that diabetics have more than their share of tooth and periodontal (gum) problems. This fact is especially true for undiagnosed diabetics or those who have failed to control their disease adequately with insulin and/or diet and exercise.
Periodontal disease among diabetics progresses rapidly, recurs frequently, and heals slowly. The resistance to treatment can lead to loosened teeth and premature tooth loss.
Your regular dental office visits provide the best chance for early detection of many health problems, including diabetes. If you have a diabetic tendency, your dentist may very well refer you to your physician - another good reason to keep your prescribed dental recall and dental cleaning appointments faithfully!
If you are diabetic, it's important that you keep your dental health history up-to-date, exercise regularly, and eat a diet that provides good nutrition:
- Have regular meals and snack times. Don't skip meals.
- Avoid sweets (cake, candy, pie, ice cream).
- Limit use of animal fats and trim fat off meats. Avoid butter, cream, egg yolks.
- Bake and broil rather than fry foods.
- Don't use alcohol, wine, or beer without your doctor's permission.
- See your dentist regularly so small dental problems can be taken care of with a local anesthetic.
Teeth don't heal themselves, so small problems turn into big ones if left untreated. Major oral surgery requires a general anesthetic which means "no food prior to surgery" - a problem for diabetics.
+Jim Du Molin is a leading Internet search expert helping individuals and families connect with the right dentist in their area. Visit his author page.