Oral Health and Body Connection: Our Responsibilities as Health Care Professionals

Oral health has long been considered to be a separate specialty that is distinct from whole body health. However, poor oral health can promote systemic disease, and is found concomitantly with numerous systemic disease processes. Thus, individuals with poor oral health may have a predisposition to other disease processes. A healthy mouth contains hundreds of billions of bacteria, and this number increases more than ten times if the mouth is not adequately cleaned. Periodontitis is a chronic inflammatory oral condition currently affecting more than 75 percent of the U.S. adult population.