Why does flossing prevent heart disease

It can also put you at a higher risk for a heart attack or stroke. Why is this? When bacteria seep through your tooth root, they enter your bloodstream and travel to the rest of your body. While some scientists dispute the idea that bacteria from your gums can affect your heart, there is no doubt that flossing is good for your oral health, and good oral health contributes to good overall health. You may not feel compelled to floss in order to prevent heart disease, but you should floss in order to prevent gum disease.

In order to maximize the benefits of flossing, take a large string of floss and wrap it around your two index fingers. Floss between each tooth by making gentle up-and-down motions in order to make sure that you are removing bacteria from under the gums. The link between smoking and heart disease is well known. Smokers are more likely to practice poor oral hygiene and to have oral cancers, periodontitis and gingivitis. Diabetes can also lead to dry mouth, poorly healing gums and oral thrush , which is a yeast infection in the mouth and throat.

In fact, those who have diabetes and also smoke are 20 times more likely to have oral thrush or periodontal disease. According to a study done in the AHA journal Hypertension , gum disease could worsen blood pressure and can interfere with medications used to treat hypertension.

Prevention is key. To make cardiac and mouth issues less likely, take these steps to reduce risk factors:. Not only do these healthy lifestyle changes help prevent cardiac disease, but they also go a long way in improving cholesterol and blood pressure, too.

Get regular checkups with your dentist for good preventive care and to help protect your teeth. For me, it's been one of the more surprising observations in recent years: study after study has shown that people who have poor oral health such as gum disease or tooth loss have higher rates of cardiovascular problems such as heart attack or stroke than people with good oral health.

A study published in is among the largest to look at this question. Researchers analyzed data from nearly a million people who experienced more than 65, cardiovascular events including heart attack and found that:. This study suggests that poor oral health does not directly cause cardiovascular disease.

But if that's true, how do we explain other studies that found a connection even after accounting for smoking and other cardiovascular risk factors? It's rare that a single study definitively answers a question that has been pondered by researchers for decades.