According to a study published in a recent issue of the Journal of Periodontology, smoking impairs healing after nonsurgical periodontal treatment. If you don't smoke but find yourself among smokers, beware of tobacco smoke, also blamed as a major cause of periodontal disease in adult nonsmokers. The human mouth is the body's biggest breeding ground of bacteria. Ironically, middle-aged and elderly people today are more likely to keep their teeth, but the longer they do so, the greater the danger of periodontal infections. Dentists are generally technical people who like to fill cavities and make crowns.
Preventive dentistry is more difficult to sell.
In any case, compliance is a problem. Periodontists are frustrated when they treat a patient's gum infections and train him to brush and floss properly - and then he returns a few months later with another serious infection because of neglect. Dr. Shlomo Zusman, head of the Health Ministry's department of dental health, says he has no accurate figures on the prevalence of periodontal diseases in the population, as dentists do not provide data, many Israelis don't visit a dentist regularly, and no public surveys have been conducted. Zusman said he was well aware of foreign epidemiological studies showing a link between gum diseases and serious chronic disorders of the body. They haven't even held an interdisciplinary conference on the subject, and a leading Hadassah cardiologist admits he knows of no informal discussions of the subject between dentists and heart experts.