Poor oral health may significantly reduce life expectancy, according to a new Japanese study that calls for better dental maintenance among older adults.
Frail oral health, defined as having fewer remaining teeth, dry mouth, trouble speaking, and difficulty chewing and swallowing, can reflect poor general health in ageing people.
Someone may have most of their natural teeth but still be considered “orally frail” if they suffer chewing problems as mouth health also involves muscle strength, saliva, and swallowing ability.
Such oral frailty, Japanese researchers found, was strongly tied to lower chances of healthy ageing.
“Dental visits may mitigate this outcome in older adults,” they noted in the latest study, published in the journal Geriatrics & Gerontology International.
The researchers assessed the oral health of 11,080 adults in Japan aged 65 or above.
The study participants were asked whether they had visited a dentist in the previous six months and were followed for an average of six years, using the national disability and mortality records, to see if they stayed healthy, developed disabilities, or passed away.
Having had a recent dental visit was treated as a sign that the participant maintained their oral health.
The researchers also estimated each participant’s healthy life expectancy, a measure of how many years one could live without disability or serious health decline.
Of the 11,080 adults assessed, 12 per cent had oral frailty at the start of the study and about 50 per cent had visited a dentist in the past six months. Those with oral frailty were 23 per cent more likely to move from healthy to disability during the follow-up period compared to those without. And the orally frail participants were 34 per cent more likely to die during follow-up.
I hope they allowed for the idea that people who are more affluent have better dental hygiene. Cause / correlation sort of thing. Its a big study so probably yea.
If you knocked the teeth out of someone advantaged when they were 65 years old, would they live shorter because of it?
Or you found someone who was disadvantaged and gave them new teeth at 65 would they live longer.
Exactly. Also, he who cares more for dental hygiene, probably also cares more for general health and vice versa. How could they link teeth to overall health in a direct causal relation....
Really good questions!
What is interesting to consider, though, is that the correlation might be an unpleasant one we normally do not want to address.
This is happening in Japan where there is a National Health Insurance program in place. Obviously, there are people in the top percentages that are going to have even superior private insurance, but I imagine this is not so prominent if the system is similar to my own country where we even have wealthy politicians somewhat regularly get made fun of for using our NHI for their procedures.
Japan is also a famously functional society...
So you could conclude that everyone in this study has access to basically what amounts to equal healthcare, with the exceptions only being some elites you could count on one hand that might have vanity procedures available to them.
This becomes a measure of stuff like flossing, daily brushing, whehter one, two, or three times brushing a day, etc.
The correlation that might exist is that poorer people take worse care of their teeth, and as they are poorer, they also have worse diets, worse fitness, and a general ignorance of best practices, so they die earlier. Their poverty correlates with low intelligence, and low intelligence correlates with early death through a variety of choices they make.