Untreated Gum Disease Can Affect Your Heart

3 November 2015
 Categories: Dentist, Blog

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If you suspect you might have gum disease, it is important to go to a dentist to have him or her evaluate your mouth as soon as possible. Gum disease will not only cause issues with your mouth, but it can also lead to issues with your heart. To understand why this happens, it is important to understand how gum disease develops in a person's mouth. Here are two things to know about this.

How Gum Disease Develops

Before you can understand how gum disease can affect your heart, it is important to understand how gum disease forms. Gum disease is something that can naturally occur if you fail to take proper care of your teeth and gums. People that use tobacco are at a higher risk for developing gum disease, but they can protect their mouths from this through good daily habits.

When you fail to keep your mouth clean, bacteria inside your mouth can begin to build up along your gum lines. When this happens, the bacteria can begin to turn into plaque, which is a harmful substance for your teeth and gums.

The plaque in your mouth can begin to eat away at your teeth and gums, and this is what causes gum disease to occur. Gum disease will leave your gums bleeding and swollen, and it will cause your gums to recede. If you leave the disease alone, it could eventually eat away so much of your gums that your teeth will no longer have anything holding them in place. If the disease gets this far, you may begin to lose teeth.

How This Affects Your Heart

When gum disease is present, the bacteria from the disease can easily spread to your heart through your bloodstream. If this happens, you could develop heart disease or other heart-related issues. This is not something that typically happens overnight, but it can happen overtime.

If you want to decrease your chances of developing heart problems from issues with your mouth, you will need to first find out if you have gum disease. If you do, you will need to take the right steps to treat the disease, so it does not cause any further harm to your health.

If you would like to learn more about gum disease, talk to a dentist, such as Bradley T Piotrowski DDS MSD LLC. A dentist can help you determine if you have this, and the steps you can take to treat it.