How Oral Health Affects Overall Health — and How to Improve Both

Tooth decay and gum disease can make it difficult to eat, talk, and concentrate. But the damage they do can go beyond our mouths.

Oral health affects our overall health. Poor oral hygiene can raise the risk of several diseases elsewhere in our body, from diabetes to dementia.

Fortunately, preventive care can help.

And both policy and health care leaders can take several actions to prioritize preventive care and improve communities’ oral health and overall well-being. Key strategies include:

• tailoring dental hygiene guidance for patients
• supporting greater access to dental care
• better integrating medical and dental services

The Relationship Between Oral Health and Overall Health

Evidence increasingly shows the strong relationship between oral health and systemic disease. Untreated gum disease can make chronic conditions, such as diabetes and heart disease, harder to manage. To effectively care for people with these conditions, providers must also treat their dental problems.

A CareQuest Institute infographic spotlights the far-reaching consequences of dental health on the rest of your body.

Recent research even shows connections between oral health and mental health. Dental disease can deepen mental health challenges, and vice versa:

• People with poor mental health are more likely than their peers to have untreated tooth pain and other unmet dental needs.
• Those with poor mental health are nearly four times more likely than others to say they feel embarrassed about their teeth, mouth, or dentures.
• Anxiety can influence our dental care experience. Nearly 50% of those with poor mental health say they were nervous at their last dental appointment, compared to 27% of their peers.

How Poor Oral Hygiene Can Harm Our Overall Health

Practices to keep your mouth healthy, such as brushing your teeth, matter to your systemic health.

Poor oral hygiene can harm your body as you age:

• It can harm your vision. Having higher levels of bacteria in your mouth, losing more of your natural teeth, and experiencing gum disease can all increase your risk of glaucoma.
• Delayed dental care in young adulthood makes it more likely that you will develop high blood pressure later in life.
• Oral health and diabetes influence each other. While gum disease makes it harder for people with diabetes to manage their blood sugar, diabetes can increase your risk of developing gum disease by 86%.

Dental disease can also raise your risk of oral cancer — another threat to your overall health.

Most throat cancers are triggered by the human papillomavirus (HPV), a common sexually transmitted infection. Poor dental health is a risk factor of oral HPV infection. However, the HPV vaccine can prevent more than 90% of cancers caused by the virus.

Solutions That Prioritize Oral Health Can Lead to Healthier Communities

Promoting good oral health through policy and clinical practices can encourage better overall health.

One effective approach is to advance personalized guidance that supports good dental hygiene.

CareQuest Institute researchers recently examined adults’ dental habits, gathered from responses to the State of Oral Health Equity in America survey. They found knowledge gaps about what shapes oral health and leads to variation in dental hygiene routines. For instance:

• Women are more likely than men to recognize that food and drink impacts their teeth. As a result, women brush more often or more carefully.
• People who use tobacco daily are less likely to brush and floss once or more per day than those who don’t use tobacco.

Given the many factors that influence oral health, this study underscores the value of providers offering tailored guidance on home care and lifestyle habits, based on each patient’s awareness and circumstances.

Another solution to promote better oral and overall health is addressing social determinants of health. That is, removing barriers that limit access to care. Veterans offer a positive case study in using this strategy:

• Veterans face many obstacles accessing dental care.
• They also suffer poor oral health and chronic illness, including diabetes and heart disease, more than their civilian peers.
• Improving veterans’ access to dental care could yield $7 billion in health savings nationwide, largely by helping them better manage those chronic conditions.

Sarah A. Sherman, director of strategic partnerships at the Maine Bureau of Veterans’ Services, recently assessed veterans’ oral health needs. She found multiple hurdles constraining dental care access.

Nationally, many veterans can’t get dental services through the Veterans Administration due to narrow eligibility rules.

At the state level, Sherman explains, “barriers to oral health care include cost, transportation, and, relatedly, the distance someone may need to drive to receive care.”

Sherman developed the Maine Veterans’ Dental Network (MVDN), a growing group of dental providers serving veterans statewide. It has eased access to care, helping veterans overcome structural challenges like lacking transportation.

“The MVDN model works, and I would like to see it expanded to every state,” shared Sherman. One more way to foster good oral and systemic health is by integrating dental and medical care. Such efforts could be life-saving:

• Oral health providers are well suited to examine and educate patients about diseases that can hurt their overall health. Two examples are the mpox virus and oral cancer. Both have symptoms that can appear in your mouth.
• Primary care providers can support dental health by adding oral cancer screenings into routine medical exams. They can also counsel patients on dental hygiene.
• Policy leaders can enhance Medicaid coverage of adult dental services, which varies across state programs. Regular dental cleanings lower a person’s risk of contracting nonventilator hospital-acquired pneumonia (NVHAP) when hospitalized. NVHAP may increase the likelihood of dangerous, costly consequences, such as going into intensive care or developing sepsis.

It’s clear that oral health affects overall health. With solutions such as those laid out in this post, leaders can make progress to improve both.