Dementia red flag in your mouth doctor says shows 'higher chance' of Alzheimer's

A dental expert has provided a 'massive' piece of advice that could help keep dementia at bay.

Chatting on the Zoe health podcast, Dr Alp Kantarci, a leading dementia expert, revealed that research links individuals suffering from mouth diseases to an increased risk of Alzheimer's and other brain disorders.

A distinguished figure in the field, Dr Kantarci holds multiple roles as a professor, scientist, dentist, oral health researcher, periodontist, dental implant surgeon, and senior member at the Forsyth Institute, renowned for its dedication to exploring the link between oral health and overall well-being.

He laid out how scientific studies involving hundreds of thousands of folk have drawn a strong connection between conditions like gum disease and brain disorders, with the data presenting some eye-opening stats.

As reports the Mirror, Dr Kantarci expanded: "We know that the oral diseases or periodontal diseases specifically can increase the risk of Alzheimer's or neurodegenerative diseases by about like 1.5 to twofold. Dementia is about a twofold increase. And then Alzheimer's disease can be one point to one point five."

The info was quite a shocker for Zoe CEO Jonathan Wolf, who exclaimed: "So that's enormous. So just to make sure that I understand that you are saying that you double the chance of getting dementia if you have oral disease than if you if you don't."

Dr Kantarci shed light on the complex relationship between dental health and dementia, stating: "The reverse is also true. Having an Alzheimer's disease can also increase your chance of getting gum disease for about like almost 1.5 to 2 fold. So it's a two directional or bidirectional link between those two, which begs your view is that the oral health."

Jonathan Wolf weighed in on the discussion, asking: "It's not just that someone has dementia., so their oral health is worse. You think that the bad oral health can cause this? And I know you said you're doing intervention studies, but we all know that takes a long time."

Highlighting the critical nature of ongoing research, Dr Kantarci underscored the potential impact of intervention studies on dementia prevention through oral health, saying: "Intervention studies are going to be extremely important because it will show that how much risk we can reduce and what populations are going to be resistant to this risk reduction. I mean, yes, these are all lovely studies that are showing that if you don't brush your teeth, you may be getting higher chance of neurodegenerative diseases, Alzheimer's disease and dementia.

"But when we do the intervention studies, is this going to help everybody to reduce the risk? We don't know that yet. So that's going to identify how much of this one is really coming from the oral sources and how much of this one is really coming to from the systemic impact of the oral diseases so that it can actually affect it."

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