EP #3: Gum Disease Red Flags and How to Prevent Systemic Issues

Did you know that the secret to overall wellness might just be lurking in your mouth? Prepare to be enlightened as Dr. Alex and Jeremy take you through the interconnected world of oral health and systemic well-being on our latest Word of Mouth episode. Discover how a simple case of bleeding gums may be a red flag for gum disease, potentially opening the floodgates for bacteria to voyage through your bloodstream and affect your heart, brain, and beyond. We dissect the complex relationship between lifestyle choices, genetics, and the health of your mouth, offering you a fresh perspective on why managing that teeming colony of bacteria is as vital as any other health routine.

Brush up on your dental knowledge as Dr. Alex shares his expertise on spotting the early warnings of gum disease and the transformative power of a robust oral hygiene regimen. It's not just about brushing—the foods you eat and the way you wield your floss play starring roles in the drama of dental health. But that's not all; say hello to Proclaim, the groundbreaking tool that's set to revamp your water picking experience, ensuring each corner of your mouth gets the star treatment. And if you're the type to forget charging your gadgets, we've got a practical tip to keep your power brush juiced up and ready, making it a cinch to flash those pearly whites. So join us and give your oral care the upgrade it deserves!

Transcript

Jeremy: 0:06

Hello, hello everyone. Welcome back to word of mouth, where we're getting into it. We're getting into exploring the connection between your oral health and your overall well-being. I'm your co-host, jeremy Wolf. I'm joined by none other than your host, dr Alex Semide. So, dr Alex, always a pleasure. It's good to see you again. I know it's been a while.

Dr. Alex: 0:26

Well, likewise, brother, it's good to be back, good to be back in the saddle and share some tips with folks. Huh.

Jeremy: 0:36

Absolutely, and I think the topic we're getting into today is an interesting one and I know you wanted to share a little bit about kind of gum disease and how that pertains to your overall health and kind of get into that a little bit. So why don't you set the stage and then we shall proceed from there?

Dr. Alex: 0:57

Cool, yeah, absolutely. So I'm going to start it off with a question for you.

Jeremy: 1:01

Oh, another question You're going to make me think this morning All right, let's go.

Dr. Alex: 1:05

Yeah, why not? So when you ever brushed, flossed anything and seen some, some pink in the sink, like a little bit of bleeding, of course, okay. So what do you think is happening when you see bleeding on like blood on your toothbrush or a little bit of blood in the sink or something like that?

Jeremy: 1:24

Well, for me it primarily comes when I don't floss frequently enough and then, and then after not flossing for three or four days shame on me. I know I should be doing it daily. At least happens to the best of us. You know I get in there and you know that I guess it gets irritated and the gums are sensitive and bleeds a little bit.

Dr. Alex: 1:45

Okay, so you're on the right track. Okay so, gum disease, gingivitis, periodontal disease all of that is, it's an infection of the gums, right, it's a chronic, slow progressing infection of the gums, and what that infection leads to is inflammation, right, and the primary thing that we see with inflammation is more blood flow. Right, Like there's. There's more blood coming to the area because the body needs to fight this infection. So things get red, things get swollen because your body is trying to fight this thing off and bring in nutrients and rush away debris. Does that make sense? Indeed, so when we brush or floss and we see bleeding, what's happening is some of those blood vessels or the skin is actually breaking and allowing some blood to exit out.

Dr. Alex: 2:37

Now, why is this of particular like interest to us? Then we just talked about, like, this is an infection that's causing this, right? So if now, like you have a little capillary or a blood vessel that breaks and you see blood coming out, now infection can rush in. And if it rushes into your blood vessels now, it gets distributed throughout your whole body. Right, it entered your body's highway system, so it goes from your mouth to other vital organs, to goes to your heart, it goes to your brain, it goes to your, your pancreas, it just kind of disseminates throughout the body. So the more uncontrolled we'll say that that infection in the mouth is, the more, the heavier the bacterial burden or the bacterial load that's entering your bloodstream is going to be, and the more frequently it's going to happen.

Jeremy: 3:31

So it's interesting, I never have even thought about that.

Dr. Alex: 3:35

I thought about it that way, right.

Jeremy: 3:36

Well, yeah, man, I just thought that it's just irritated because I haven't been doing it and you know it seems to go away the more I floss. But so what are the primary causes of this? The underlying causes and I guess how to like life, lifestyle factors as a whole contribute to its development.

Dr. Alex: 3:56

Yeah, absolutely so. You know it's a multifactorial process, right, yeah, it's a good word, right Meaning just there's a bunch of different things, a bunch of different factors that come into play. Right, genetics, that's one of them. Right, genetics kind of sets the tone for basically everything that happens in our body and it's not to say, like there hasn't been like a periodontal disease gene isolated, that if you, jeremy Wolf, have this gene, you're going to have periodontal disease.

Jeremy: 4:30

But it does seem I'm sorry to cut you off it does seem to have a major impact. For instance, my wife, she just her teeth are beautiful, her gums are beautiful, she hasn't done anything special. She's never had any cavities when she was younger, and myself Not so much. I've had problems all along the way from a very early age and Similar with my children. Right, yeah, it seems like there is a large genetic component to that.

Dr. Alex: 4:57

There is a genetic component. I I sometimes hesitate a little bit to throw that out there, simply because sometimes we can use the genetic thing as kind of a crutch right. But Whereas there is that genetic component, a lot of this is factors that we can control and with periodontal disease, the immense majority of cases, there are some outliers out there that have, you know, systemic diseases that lead to it and things like that. But you know, 99 times out of 100, a lot of this has to do with our ability to control that infection in the mouth, right to control plaque. The reason we brush and floss in the morning is to scrape off plaque, which are nothing but you know, colonies of bacteria and germs that populate the mouth. Okay, and I Always I like sharing this with folks because it's when I learned it. I was, I Was, I couldn't believe it, right, and I this actually just came across my radar a few months ago. But were you aware that the bacterial concentration of the plaque in your teeth is Equal to the bacterial concentration in your colon?

Jeremy: 6:15

Somehow I knew you were gonna say something like that, and no, I was not aware, and thank you for bringing that to my attention.

Dr. Alex: 6:22

Yeah, you're welcome, jeremy will. So I mean, it's crazy, right, like the amount of bacteria contained in your plaque is Equal to the amount of Bacteria and you know down kind of kind of makes sense to some degree, because if you're put, if you're eating all sorts of foods, and what?

Jeremy: 6:42

now You're not taking care of your mouth and and you're gonna get bacteria there and it's same.

Dr. Alex: 6:47

Yes, I mean, there are millions of bacteria even in the cleanest mouths, right, there's a lot of bacteria. But it's, it's up to us, with our at-home care or, you know, our supportive therapy at home, to control that bacteria so that it doesn't snowball, so that it doesn't get out of control.

Jeremy: 7:05

Interesting question for you. On a side, on a tangent, I know you're obviously not a vet, but I've heard that dogs mouths are cleaner Than humans mouths, or have less bacteria. Seems wild to me. Is that? Is there any truth in that? Or is that just a something I heard somewhere along the line and there's something that we use to justify letting our dogs lick our face?

Dr. Alex: 7:28

Yeah, I yeah, I'm not sure about that. I probably, yeah, and I've. I've had dogs, loved my dogs, and you know they lick their own butts a lot, and then they want to lick your face right after. I'd say, wait, you know, hold off can't be good. And 15 minutes? Um yeah, I'm not sure. I've heard, I've heard, I've heard the whole like our mouths are dirtier than toilets too. You ever heard that one?

Jeremy: 7:57

Toilets are cleaner than our mouths. I'm still laughing it, hold off. I'd say hold off about 10 to 15 minutes, you know?

Dr. Alex: 8:02

yeah, let it let the IGA in the mouth kind of break down some of that, some of those, but bugs.

Jeremy: 8:09

Oh man, that's too funny. So what? What are some, I Guess, like early signs or symptoms of gum disease that one might detect that could get them to start realizing they might have a bit of a problem?

Dr. Alex: 8:27

Yeah, so you know, like we said earlier, pink in the sink, right. If you see any bleeding, that's not normal, right? The gum tissue around your teeth is really a lot like the tissue in the palm of your hand. It's tissue that's designed to take a beating, right, Like you eat chips, like our ancestors were gnawing on, you know, mastodon bones and stuff like that. Like that tissue developed to withstand a lot of abuse. So if a little toothbrush is causing it to bleed, that's red flag number one. All right. Things like recession, right, Are oftentimes indicative of some issues going on too Like it's like recession in the gum, where you see more and more.

Jeremy: 9:15

Cause I have one tooth in my mouth where it's been like this forever, where it's just like the gum goes all the way up.

Dr. Alex: 9:23

Yeah, I've got a couple of those too. Right, that's not necessarily indicative of gum disease, right. That can happen because maybe your gums are too thin or you had braces that moved teeth into a position where they're not, you know, optimal. There's a bunch of reasons, but it could be indicative of some inflammation and some of that gum disease processes happening and inflammation, right Like I feel like we don't frequently really look in our mouths, right, like, take a look, pull your cheek back, take a look at your gums. Do they look pale and pink? Okay, that's a pretty good sign, right. Do they look puffy and red? And then that's an indication that there's some inflammation happening. Right, and you may want to get that checked out.

Jeremy: 10:14

Preventative measures, aside from the obvious brushing your teeth twice daily, flossing what are some things you could do outside that? I would imagine that nutrition plays a big part in this type of thing as well. What are some suggestions you can give to listeners on how to? Because it's one of those things, alex, where, like everybody knows that it's important to take care of your teeth and your body and everything, but we get lazy. In the moment it's just like you know.

Jeremy: 10:43

I tell my kids make sure you brush your teeth before you go to sleep tonight, and then I'm laying in bed. I forgot to brush my teeth and I'm laying there like, do I really want to get out of bed to brush my teeth? I'm like, no, I don't want to be a hypocrite, get your butt out of bed, go brush your teeth. But we all get lazy, right. But then you look years down the road and you start looking at all these problems that you're having. You're like man, I should have done better. It's like what are some things that we can incorporate in our daily lives to create like habits, aside from the obvious brushing and flossing, so that we don't have these problems later on and that we don't end up with. You know, a mouth that's missing, teeth and-.

Dr. Alex: 11:17

That's gonna cost you a lot of time and money.

Jeremy: 11:18

Yeah right, like my grandfather with the false teeth and I know they have implants for that nowadays but I remember him eating and the teeth falling out in the food. We don't want to see that. That's no good.

Dr. Alex: 11:29

Yeah, that's no good, nobody wants to deal with that. Yeah, man, I mean, prevention is key, right, like in dentistry, I always tell folks that 99% of issues are preventable. Right, like, if we and prevention is usually old, saying ounce of prevention, pound of cure, and we all want a six pack. But who gets down and does the crunches? You know, Definitely, developing those habits the earlier in life, the better. Brushing twice a day for the full two minutes, right, that's another thing. We kind of sometimes just want to check the box off, brush my teeth, but you're in there and you quick scrub and boom out the door, you go.

Jeremy: 12:11

And Never, never, never me, I'm always in there.

Dr. Alex: 12:14

I know you're a very diligent, but yeah, the flossing. We don't need to floss multiple times a day. Even flossing every other day right To start establishing those good habits is a good place to start.

Jeremy: 12:34

Is there too much flossing, like I?

Dr. Alex: 12:36

know people have the.

Jeremy: 12:37

I'd imagine you could irritate right With those little dental picks If you're sitting there all day long getting in and out. I'd imagine that would have some of the predictions.

Dr. Alex: 12:44

So, like everything in life, is technique sensitive too right. It's not about just doing things, it's about doing them right. So, actually, part of every single a new patient exam in the office, the patients will get a series of videos with proper at home care tips and tricks. So you can go on YouTube and find a slew of videos on how to brush properly, how to floss properly, how to use a water pick properly, and I'll tell you, those three are huge right. If you establish and use those and do that well every single day, you're gonna be doing yourself a lot of good.

Dr. Alex: 13:28

I'm gonna do a little quick plug here for something that I'm super excited about. We are gonna be demoing this new device called Proclaim, which everyone knows what a water pick is right, basically like a little pressure washer for your teeth and your gums and you gotta have to like move it around and makes a huge mess and all that. I've never used that before. You've never used a water pick. They're fun. They're fun. You should try one. I'll get you one. Can we get into it? Yes, please. So this device, this Proclaim device, uses a custom made mouthpiece with 70 precisely placed jets that shoot water at the same time into all the nooks and crannies of your mouth. So the water picking process that used to take, you know, three, four minutes, can now take only seven seconds.

Jeremy: 14:22

So you just take this mouthpiece, bite into it.

Dr. Alex: 14:25

Bite into it, hit the on button and it's yep, and seven seconds later that's it, you're done and you're doing?

Jeremy: 14:34

what exactly are you doing with this technology? Is this brand new technology, or has this been around for a while?

Dr. Alex: 14:38

Yeah, yeah. So no, this is brand new stuff. We're one of the first offices in Florida that are gonna carry it and work with it.

Dr. Alex: 14:47

I'm actually gonna be receiving my demo mouthpiece in the next week and I'm gonna be running a little experiment on social media. I'm not going to brush my teeth for a week and just use this device and I'm gonna have my hygienist track the amount of plaque that builds up in my mouth just using this device versus if I brushed regularly, and we're gonna do a little comparison test in the office using both myself and Dr Tart. So pretty excited about that. Stay tuned.

Jeremy: 15:19

We'll give you more info on it. I won't be hanging out with you that week.

Dr. Alex: 15:23

Yeah, I told my wife about it. She wasn't thrilled, but you know, breath mints yeah.

Jeremy: 15:28

I guess.

Dr. Alex: 15:29

Hopefully it works well enough. But yeah, man, it's all about developing those positive habits at home. You asked about diet, right? Diet is obviously important, right, as it pertains to the mouth minimizing the amounts of sugars we eat and that doesn't just mean, you know, candy and twizzlers and things like that. It means anything that becomes sugar in the mouth. So all of your carbs bread, rice, pasta those count as sugars when it comes to the mouth, and that is the rocket fuel for all of the plaque, all of the bacteria. That's what they eat, okay, so bear that in mind. Minimizing sugar intake, removing that plaque regularly and thoroughly, it's gonna go a long way.

Jeremy: 16:20

Good stuff, as always. You are a big. I'm just going to let you know that I'm still with me. You glitched out for a second there. What would be before, before we wrap up this segment, If you could give our listeners one, just one piece, one piece of advice for maintaining their gum health. What would that be If you had?

Dr. Alex: 16:55

to pick one thing. Can I do that? Okay, that's fair. So get a checkup, get your regular checkups right the sooner. The sooner things are are seen and diagnosed, the easier it is to fix and to make the commitment to yourself right, like, spend it's, it's five minutes a day. Right, that you're going to spend caring for your, for your self, right, and you're going to save yourself a ton of time and money and and and dental visits down the line and you're going to have that awesome checkup visit. You're going to high five, your dentist out the door and life's going to be good, good stuff.

Jeremy: 17:42

One thing I wanted to mention. I wanted to say this earlier. When we're talking about brushing of teeth, just a little tip for anybody out there with smaller children that I I learned that helped me out immensely. When I was a kid, I learned that I had some wonderful apps on the phone for kids brushing apps true, yeah, where you know they'll. It'll be a two minute timer and they could, like you know, fight monsters while they're brushing. The faster they brush, the better they do. I found a lot of utility in that and that helped. I'll add one more thing Power brushes right.

Dr. Alex: 18:13

Electric toothbrushes are far superior than manual brushes, especially in the hard to reach areas right Up there. Alright, yeah, a manual brush will do just fine, but way in the back, where you have, where you don't have a whole lot of space.

Dr. Alex: 18:30

Yeah, right, and that's especially especially for a kid, right, especially for a kid. You know, with an electric brush you can just park it, move it along slowly. You know you teach them the routine, this is where you start, this is where you go next, and they pick up on that routine and they do it the same way every single time and they get the results that they want every single time. So power brush, make sure that whatever it is that you get sits on a charger so that it's always, you know, fully gassed up and ready to go when you're ready to use it.

Jeremy: 19:01

When you're ready to take it for a spin. That's oh, I like that. Yeah, good stuff and alright. Well, everyone thanks for tuning in. Got some valuable insights and wisdom out of this one and we will look forward to seeing you on the next episode of Ward of Mouth. Keep smiling, folks. I don't want to take care. Thank you, remember a healthy smile.