Is there a link between gum disease and heart attacks?

Q.
Hi, as a child I suffered a lot of heart palpitations and received a lot of advice on how to prevent them and have a ‘healthy heart’ in order to help. however recently I wondered, is there an established link with gum disease and heart attacks? I heard comment of this on TV recently? cheers
A.
Hi,

The simple answer is that there is a link between gum disease and cardiovascular disease. We cannot say that one causes the other, bout gum disease may slightly increase your risk of heart disease. One of the problems is that some of the big risk factors for gum disease and cardiovascular disease are the same i.e. smoking, diabetes, obesity, lifestyle and as such it is hard to know what the true link is or if the diseases just have lots of risk factors in common.

With all the emerging research I think it is safe to say that gum disease does increase the risk or cardiovascular disease and that treating gum disease will reduce this risk.

Dr Ian Dunn

Dr Ian Dunn

PurelyPerio Clinic 334, PO Box 334, Wilmslow, Cheshire, SK9 0AG Web: www.purelyperio.co.uk Tel: 01625 419700

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