The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) brings us the terrifying statistic that every year in the US, over 800,000 people deal with a heart attack. Heart disease can affect any person, regardless of their age or eating habits. However, most of those who deal with heart disease are middle-aged or even older.
It’s well-known what you need to do to lower your risk of dealing with heart disease: eating healthy, doing physical exercises regularly, avoiding smoking and alcohol, and so on. But even so, nobody can guarantee you 100% that heart disease is at bay, and a new study even comes to complicate things a bit.
Periodontitis makes you more likely to deal with heart disease
You can now include ‘not getting periodontitis’ on the list of how to try to avoid dealing with heart disease. The gum infection capable of damaging the soft tissue and even the bone supporting your teeth now also seems to be an indicator that a person might have a higher chance of developing heart disease, according to the new research conducted by scientists from the Forsyth Institute and Harvard University. Furthermore, having periodontitis also makes you more likely to deal with a stroke or cardiovascular issues, as the same study says.
Dr. Rahul Aggarwal, an Interventional cardiologist, stated, as Yahoo Life quotes:
Researchers have been looking at this for at least 20 years now. We definitely see a correlation between gum disease and a heart attack but haven’t seen causation. Diseases that damage blood vessels like Periodontitis can also damage the heart. If a person isn’t getting good blood flow to the gums, they’re more likely to have gum disease and whatever is setting that off can also do the same to the person’s heart. Systemically the person may have a problem. It’s a reflection of the overall health of the individual. Inflammation also plays a role and seems to increase the onset of heart disease.
The new study was published in the Journal of Periodontology.
