The New Paradigm In Periodontal Disease Control, Part 2

Last entry discussed how biofilm is constantly occurring and attacking at-risk patients. So this entry will focus on how a patient has to be susceptible to inflammatory problems like periodontitis. There are genetic, dental, and medical reasons that influence how a patient contracts the disease.
  
Biofilms affect all of us, but they affect each of us differently. In fact, about two-thirds of patients who have periodontal disease only contract a mild form of it. The other third have serious and complex infections. There are things in people's lives that tip the scales in the direction of severe disease. Patients' genetics, lifestyle, and medical health influence their thresholds for infection and damage. The big categories are:

1) Genes for highly sensitive inflammatory response, or a family history of the disease.
2) Medical conditions that alter the immune response or inflammatory response.
3) Smoking habit.
4) Chronic stress in any form.
5) Bite problems, including clenching, grinding, or unbalanced bites.

Even if we remove biofilm when patients have infections, they may still get recurrent infections because of the above factors. Since biofilms never take a day off, patients with one or more of these above risk factors need to constantly manage their disease issues with their dentists and specialists. Shifting the patients' responses to inflammation means getting rid of biofilm regularly, but also treating  the risk factors. Until the those are managed the right way, the periodontal disease will hang around, and the chances of losing teeth go up.

Diabetes, heart disease, chronic inflammatory lung diseases, apnea, autoimmune disorders, obesity --these are all disorders that raise the level of body-wide inflammation and reduce the body's ability to heal.And periodontitis works to complicate these diseases too.

Smoking introduces toxins that depress the immune system's ability to fight infection, and also stimulates the release of a number of inflammatory proteins in the body.

Chronic stress, be it physical or psychological, will alter the body's threshold to infection. Chronic pain induces the same inflammatory proteins as smoking in some cases. Depression has been shown to alter physical health and immune response.