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20620809 tn?1504362969

Gum Disease linked to Higher death rate with Covid 19

Recently it has been published that doctors note that those with gum disease die at a rate of 9 times more when they get covid 19. Interesting and scary.  https://bestlifeonline.com/gum-disease-die-covid-news/  
Wonder why? Any thoughts on why this would be?  
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517872 tn?1623105664
Before the virus out-break there existed evidence about relation between Teeth infection, Gum diseases and heart attacks. So, has to be a connection and that is why Oral hygiene is important.
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I was thinking about the same thing. Only recently (like in the last decade) have they realized and publicized that dental issues aren't just a nice-to-handle issue for the teeth's sake, and that sometimes the kind of bacteria in decayed teeth can be very dangerous to the whole body. They now tell pregnant women that tooth decay can impact the health of their developing baby, for example. When my dad got old, he had a couple of molars that were clearly rotten (his breath was awful) but his wife didn't push him to get them taken care of. He finally did have them pulled after probably five years of increasingly horrible breath. What began for him almost at that same time, was Alzheimer's. We always wondered if the dementia was caused (or increased) by those years with rotten teeth. With infection in your head right by the brain, how could there not be an impact?

The article linked here speculates that the statistical link between bad outcomes with Covid and gum disease might be because the gum disease can cause inflammation of the whole body. All the more reason to love your dentist!
Except, nothing dentists do is actually good for you nor do they get rid of infection.  The only procedure that might get rid of infection cleanly is an extraction, but even then, and quite often, while the tooth is gone, the infection isn't.  You just don't notice it much.  Root canals lock infection inside the tooth, as only the largest canals can be cleaned out, and even then, there is often lingering infection above the gum line.  Filling a cavity puts toxic substances in place of a toxic substance, and the least toxic filling materials don't last that long.  Dentists are mostly to free us from pain, and that's a big big thing, but they really don't necessarily free us of infection or toxicity up there.  Plus, as you age, the amount of radiation up there just goes up.  This isn't that unusual.  Surgeries seldom fix anything completely, either.  We all do the best we can, and some just do what pays well, and some don't keep up with current knowledge, but the luckiest folks are those who just have really good teeth.  I only know all this because I have really bad teeth, and so you learn.  I read a very interesting article by a dentist who pointed out way better than I can just how bad for you dentistry is, and yet it's still better than the alternative, which is living the life you do have in constant pain.  So I am wondering how useful the above data is, given that dental procedures don't usually find infection or fix it completely.  So while we may draw a correlation between those with obvious gum disease, that doesn't count all the rest of us who have some but don't know it because our dentists didn't find it.  Maybe the correlation is, therefore, much weaker than reported, which is what I expect.  But who knows?  Just to say, don't worry about it, folks, we really can't know.  Peace, all, and stay safe.
And I would also add, most with gum disease, which takes a long time to notice, are older.  Those with Alzheimer's are older.  Covid is vastly more toxic to those who are older.  Age may be the factor here.
I never learned if Dad had gum disease, so my comment might not match what the article is saying anyway. He did have decayed teeth. Cause and effect obviously can't be shown here -- both things could have come along with aging and had had nothing to do with each other. But when someone is slowly slipping into Alzheimer's and you're also wondering why on earth his wife hasn't pressed him to take care of the smelly teeth, it's natural to at speculate that the one condition prompts or aggravates the other.
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