Risk Assesment cont.

I have seen older people who have started taking medicines for chronic illnesses that dry up the protective saliva. This has become so common that it has been called, MIX, for medicine induced xerostomia (dryness of the mouth.) When you eat, your mouth becomes acidic (low pH) as the beginning of the digestive process. The saliva buffers the pH of the mouth, so that in a normal mouth, the pH returns to normal within about a half hour of a meal. But in a person with a dry mouth, it can take hours. Indeed for the person with a dry mouth, the mouth can live in a highly acid environment from breakfast until hours after bedtime, because by time the limited saliva has had a chance to buffer the mouth from the last meal, the person has eaten again.

Type of bacteria and saliva amount (and pH) are predictors of risk for cavities. It is possible for dentists to evaluate you for that risk by testing the saliva. And it is possible to treat the saliva of those people determined to be at risk for cavities to reduce the risk, before the damage is done to the teeth. This is done with a series of mouth rinses that over a period of time lower the acidity of the saliva.

Risk for gum disease can likewise be assessed by determining the bacterial make up of the fluid next to the teeth at the deepest invaginations of the gums. The unhealthy bacteria, are anaerobes, or bacteria that prefer an environment that is without oxygen. The bacteria can be observed and generally identified as unhealthy with the use of a microscope. The exact make up of the gum disease-causing bacteria and the approximate numbers can be determined by a test called DNA-PCR, (DNA-polymerase chain reaction)

The presence of the unhealthy bacteria can be determined before the damage has started from the inflammatory process that results from gum disease. And science is finding that the damage to the body goes well beyond the teeth and gums.