Exercise & Gum Health
The summer is coming hallelujah!! Love Island is starting next week...I have to watch it you know, to keep me in the loop.. but as everyone rushes to the gym to queue for treadmills in an attempt to get 'beach ready' it might captivate a few of you to know that exercising regularly actually has a really positive effect on our gum health as well as our general health and mental wellbeing.
Of course this doesn't mean if you have washboard abs you wont have Gum Disease, a gold standard oral hygiene routine as outlined by your hygienist (hi) or your dentist is still essential. There are however, some really interesting studies which have shown that the more likely we are to be active the less likely we are to develop Gum Disease [1].
The NHS recommends that we engage in two types of activity per week, aerobic and strength, and the frequency of this exercise depends on our age. So the recommendations I'm going to outline here may be slightly different if you are a child, a young person or over 65 but I will link the NHS page here if you need more information.
For 19 - 64 year olds it is recommended that we should try and be active daily and should do [2]
150 minutes of moderate physical activity (30mins 5 times a week) such as cycling or brisk walking AND strength activities hitting all the major muscle groups eg legs chest shoulders back hips and abdomen twice per week
OR
75 minutes of vigorous activity per week such as running or tennis AND two strength training sessions a week as above
OR
a combination of moderate and vigorous activity eg x2 30 minute runs per week alongside 30 mins of moderate activity AND the two strength training sessions
This might seem ambitious, from the daily feedback I get sometimes people find it difficult to find an extra 60 seconds daily to clean in between their teeth (no judgement) so does exercise really make the difference?
In the words of Elle Woods from legally blonde, exercise gives you endorphins and endorphins make you happy, so possibly all these extra endorphins are encouraging people to clean their teeth more and or better? You could argue that patients who exercise regularly are more health conscious generally and prioritise their gum health as part of their daily routine? But can we actually see a direct correlation between following these guidelines and having healthier gums? The short answer my friends is yes!
Maintaining a normal weight, regularly engaging in exercise and eating a high quality diet showed reduced incidences of Gum Disease in patients [3], this was found to especially be the case in non smokers and ex smokers [4]. Also increasing physically activity has shown a reduction of inflammation and inflammatory substances around the gums [5]and anything that reduces inflammation around the gums is amazing.
Now, the next study I looked at was not a human study so we can't definitively say that these results apply to humans* but the results were interesting non the less. They found that 8 weeks of increased exercised reduced the rate of bone loss and inflammation in subjects with Diabetes and Gum Disease [6]. Great news, and I feel it does no harm to recommend that my Diabetic patients increase their physical activity levels where possible, even though these results are not from a human study.
But what about those patients who unfortunately already have Gum Disease? Well the good news there is patients who already have Gum Disease also showed signs of improvement and reduced inflammation when they exercised regularly [7]. So recommending regular exercise for one and for all seems to be the way to go. Now drop and give me 20!
So great news for the gums and great news for the whole body! This is especially important as it is thought that 21% of the UK population of men and 25% of women are thought to be inactive [9]and obesity related hospital admissions increased by 18% in 2018[8]. Have a go, 30 minutes a day doing whatever you fancy exercise-wise could really make a massive difference.
If you would like a Dental Hygiene appointment, you can visit me at Moira Cosmetic Dental or Bupa Dental Care Glengormley or follow me on Instagram @homegirlhygienist
*I really don't condone animal testing, but these studies fall onto our laps from time to time and all we can do is the best we can with the information we have been given.
(1https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fphys.2019.00234/full
(2)https://www.nhs.uk/live-well/exercise
(3https://aap.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1902/jop.2005.76.8.1362
(4https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S030057120500031X
(5)https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1600-051X.2009.01394.x
(6)https://www.mdpi.com/2072-6643/10/11/1702
(7)https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5865566/
#exercise #health #gumhealth #gumdisease #periodontitis #prevention #dentaleducation #dentalhygiene
