Why We're Promoting Some New Gluten-Free Products

Dr. Johnson's office is promoting some new gluten-free products -- please stop by and ask! And we've gotten some questions about why a dentist, of all people, is interested in gluten intolerance.  The answer is technically complex, but sweetly simple to explain; people with gluten intolerance who eat gluten frequently have horrible dental health.

The Technically Complex Explanation
Gluten causes someone with celiac disease -- the 'technical' name for gluten intolerance -- to have an autoimmune 'tantrum' whenever they eat wheat.  This sudden flurry of autoimmune activity takes places entirely in the intestines, so there are no outward signs, but the results can be devastating.

1. The immune system attacks and kills the villi (the threadlike projections inside your intestines that rummage through your food and extract the nutrients from it) in an attempt to keep the gluten from being absorbed into the body.
2. With no villi, the intestines are unable to extract nutrients from your food properly. No matter how good your diet is, you simply cannot get the nutrients you need from your food.
3. When your body is low on nutrients for an extended period of time, it directs what nutrients it can glean toward the most critical-for-life organs: the heart, brain, lungs, and so forth. The teeth are not on the body's 'critical' list.
4. Over months of not getting any nutrients from the body, the teeth lose their ability to defend themselves from your normal oral bacteria, and you end up with cavities, gum disease, and more.

What Can The Dentist Do?
The nutrient deficiency caused by a person with celiac disease eating gluten for an extended time can be seen in many places other than the teeth -- they often have bad skin, bad hair, emotional or mental imbalances, and so forth -- but rarely can the evidence be seen more powerfully than inside the mouth. That makes your dentist one of the best people to warn you that you may be gluten intolerant -- and by a happy coincidence, the dentist is already prone to dispensing advice about diet and health matters. Drs. Johnson and Risbrudt's decision to carry and promote some gluten-free products is the result.

The Bottom Line: Taking Care of Your Mouth to Take Care of Cancer

From The Journal of Oral Microbiology:

If there is indeed a causal link between oral microbiota and cancer, then the ultimate goal would be to prevent the development of cancer by interfering with the putative carcinogenic potential of the microbiome.
In other words, if the bacteria in your mouth are doing something that increases your risk of getting cancer, then the goal is to find something that we can do to counteract that risk. There are a few different tactics that you can use:

Reduce Overall Cancer Risk

Cancer risk may be affected by what's going on in your mouth, but your mouth really is only one small part of your body. If you're worried about an increase in cancer risk from one place, fight it by decreasing your cancer risk elsewhere. There are plenty of pages online about reducing your overall cancer risks, so we won't get into it here -- it's just one way to address the problem.

Reduce the Risk from Your Oral Bacteria

Cysteine is a non-essential amino acid that is commonplace in several foods. It's also been shown to prevent carcinogens from forming in its immediate environment -- so a regular mouthwash with a drop of cysteine in it could, in theory, reduce the cancer risk without actually doing anything else to improve your oral health. Of course, that seems kind of silly when you could just...

Reduce the Presence of Negative Bacteria in Your Mouth

And the way to do that is stuff you should already be doing every day -- brush, floss, use mouthwash, avoid sugary foods, eat a healthy diet, get decent exercise and get plenty of rest. It's amazing how much just taking care of yourself can keep you well taken care of.