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All Smiles: Aging with Proper Oral Hygiene for a Healthy Mouth
Lisa Reisman • Aug 28, 2019
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All Smiles: Aging with a Healthy Mouth
Many people sacrifice their oral health for other health concerns, but did you know that the health of your teeth and mouth greatly affects the health of your entire body? With age, oral health takes a backseat to other health concerns even though they are all closely related. Do not forget about your senior loved one’s oral hygiene. Use this information to advise your family on the best practices for nourishing this vital part of the body.
The Importance of Oral Hygiene
Saliva neutralizes acids, enhances taste, and aids digestion. Many complications
arise with age that can decrease the production of saliva, leading to a condition called dry mouth. Proper hygiene is necessary to flush out bad bacteria—called plaque—that can have long-lasting effects not only within your senior’s mouth but also throughout her body.
The Mouth
Let’s start at the beginning: the teeth, tongue, gums, and jaw. Cleaning and hydration help saliva to eliminate harmful substances and enable the helpful ones, like minerals, to nourish the body.
Acids are harmful, and without saliva to neutralize them, they decay teeth over time. Teeth can become sharp and jagged, and that can easily tear up your loved one’s tongue. Tooth decay also makes chewing hot, cold, and hard foods painful for your loved one. Considering that many fruits and veggies are hard foods, tooth decay could inhibit him from healthy eating. Acids can also cause painful mouth ulcers, also known as canker sores.
Have you ever gotten food stuck in your teeth? Without proper hygiene through cleaning and hydration, plaque forms. Plaque is made of harmful bacteria, and it hardens into tartar over time, making it even more difficult to treat. These bacteria can do some serious damage to your senior’s gums, resulting in gum disease. It starts with gingivitis: infected, swollen, perhaps bleeding gums and pain while eating. Eventually, gingivitis can progress to periodontitis, and the stakes raise. The damage causes teeth to start separating from gums, leaving gums even more vulnerable to bacterial infection. It’s also when teeth can loosen and fall out.
70% of seniors in the US suffer from periodontitis, and it’s such a shame because it is so easy to prevent and contributes so much to other complications.
Oral Hygiene and Health of the Whole Body
Because the mouth is the most direct gateway to the rest of the body, poor can lead to uncomfortable and even dangerous conditions. Plaque passes through the digestive system and pours into other body parts, and as a result, it can cause or enable pneumonia by infecting the lungs, heart disease by hardening the arteries, or dementia by damaging the nervous system. It also puts your loved one at as much as a 50% greater risk for cancer, specifically kidney, pancreatic, and blood cancer as well as mouth cancer.
Risks
If any of these describe your loved one, he will have to try even harder to take care of his oral hygiene: With diabetes, blood glucose levels are irregular and hard to control—in general, sugar will be harder to break down and digest, from the mouth through the digestive system. AIDS also dries out the mouth and brings herpes sores.
In terms of daily life, a habit of grazing throughout the day without brushing will result in tooth decay. On the topic of eating and drinking, consuming too much caffeine will dehydrate your senior, resulting in dry mouth.
Unfortunately, certain medications can cause dry mouth, decreasing salivary production, including several medications for mental illnesses and diseases, diuretics, and blood pressure medications. Chemo can also have this effect. People receiving treatment for these conditions, too, should consult with a doctor for special advisement on good oral hygiene.
And finally, smoking and excessive drinking make mouth cancer 16 times more likely. When you consider the elevated risk that these habits give to cancer and other diseases, you should realize that helping your senior loved one to stop these activities will greatly improve her health.
Prevention and Treatment
The most important course of action for proper dental hygiene is developing healthy habits. Flossing and using antiseptic mouthwash every day, in addition to brushing at least twice per day with fluoride toothpaste, prevents gum disease at a 95% rate. An electric or interdental toothbrush is recommended to get hard to reach places thoroughly. Brush for 2-3 minutes, evenly on the bottom and top teeth.
Seniors with particularly low saliva production can improve it by chewing sugarless gum, using oral moisturizer, or using a humidifier during sleep. And, of course, drinking plenty of water—especially after eating—not only serves to promote oral health but also helps to clear the whole body of harmful bacteria and keep things running smoothly.
Take your senior to the dentist frequently for checkups, especially in any of these cases: If your loved one has tooth fillings, keep in mind that those are still decaying and may become infected. Pain killers can alleviate the discomfort, and root canal can solve this problem entirely. Canker sores can usually be treated with thorough cleansing at home, but if they persist for 2 weeks, it’s time for a trip to the dentist.
Dentures
The number of elderly people who need dentures continues to decline. Still, after significant tooth loss, your loved one might need them or have them to help in daily life, and that’s okay. The routine for taking care of dentures
is like the routine for taking care of your teeth, albeit more involved. Take care of them by cleaning them every night and then leave them in Steradent overnight to get the most out of them. Consult a prosthodontist for further advisement.
Once your loved gets her first pair of dentures, assuming they fit, continue copying them instead of getting new ones fitted each time. Dentures depend on saliva to keep them in, so hydration is as important as ever. For seniors with severe dry mouth, there are denture adhesives to help.
Medicare does not cover dental expenses. Thankfully, as you can see, you and your loved one can prevent gum disease and decrease the risk for other illnesses simply through routine.
Hopefully, this information on oral hygiene will help you to help your loved one, not only to keep those pearly whites but also to take care of his entire body.
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