Dr. Joe Bell Discusses the Importance of Oral Health
Joe Bell:
No question that much research, studies, and these associations can go back and forth and argue, interplay, et cetera, but we know that the health of your mouth helps to influence the health of your body, and the health of your body shows up oftentimes in your mouth.
And so, if we can develop a healthy oral environment, lots of times it can correct a lot of things. And specifically, I’m thinking of things like diabetes or chronic immunosuppression, transplant patients, advance cardiac disease, things like that.
You need to have a healthy mouth to improve those other medical functions.
Sometimes people are not aware of other medical issues they have, and we look in their mouth and there are telltale signs of those other things, and so you can be in on that first point of diagnosis and say, ‘Mr. Jones, I see this in your mouth. Sometimes this can indicate this other condition. Have you spoken with your physician about this?’ And then refer them back to, again, be part of this complete care.
We should do that as dentists, we should work with people’s physicians, because we’re all treating the person, we’re just seeing different parts of them.