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We all know that brushing your teeth after every meal is important for good breath and maintaining your smile. But you may not know that there is a link between good dental health and your overall health.
Not all toothpaste does exactly the same thing. There are toothpastes varieties for sensitive teeth, tooth whitening, anti-cavity fluoride, natural ingredients and enough choices to fill an entire aisle in your local pharmacy.
There is even a patented formula Plaque HD® toothpaste using Targetol Technology that can identify dental plaque which was created by an orthodontist who wanted to create a safe way for patients to highlight and clean dental plaque at home. The company said that this formula can clean twice the amount of plaque as conventional toothpaste.
Now, a new study from Florida Atlantic University published in The American Journal of Medicine offered proof that test subjects who used Plaque HD® had statistically significant reductions in inflammation throughout their bodies and that this could help reduce the rates of heart attacks and strokes.
These are significant findings because the United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found that 47 percent of American aged 30 years and older have some form of periodontal disease, a pathological inflammatory disease of the gums and tissues surrounding the teeth that is commonly known as gingivitis. The numbers go up to 70 percent for adults aged 65 or older.
A news release from the university said that it was a blind study so only half of the participants used Plaque HD® and the rest used regular toothpaste. The results were measured by Quest Diagnostics by measuring by the high sensitivity C-reactive protein (hs-CRP) that signal inflammation.
“The current findings show that Plaque HD significantly decreases hs-CRP in subjects with elevated levels at baseline, which is similar to the findings in our previous pilot trial,” said Dr. Charles H. Hennekens, the senior author of the study and the First Sir Richard Doll Professor in Florida Atlantic University’s Charles E. Schmidt College of Medicine.
“These results provide a strong rationale to conduct a large-scale randomized trial whose results could have significant clinical and public health implications,” he added.
Based on these findings, the news release said that "Hennekens and colleagues at FAU and the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health are drafting an investigator-initiated research grant proposal to the National Institutes of Health [NIH]. Their proposed randomized trial will test whether Plaque HD® reduces progression of atherosclerosis in the coronary and carotid arteries, for which systemic inflammation is an important precursor."
Taking care of your oral health is an easy way to improve your overall health and should be part of your daily regimen. We are finding more and more that there are connections between diseases in different parts of the body and that we have to take a more holistic approach. Our ancient healers recognize this, and now modern medicine is finding that the natural approaches to wellness and healing still apply.
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