Dentist Writes Book on Heart Disease Connection
Townsend Letter, July, 2009
Can oral spirochete infections cause heart attacks? The discovered relationship between dental and heart disease announced by the US Surgeon General in 2000 has necessitated a unique cooperation between dentistry and medicine. Patients who have systemic diseases such as heart disease, diabetes, and Alzheimer’s disease also typically have multiple missing teeth. As a result of the missing teeth, these patients require the services of implant dentists. Therefore, implant dentistry requires practitioners to understand these diseases and the many medicines that these patients are taking to treat their ailments.
Scientific studies have definitely shown a relationship between periodontal (gum) disease and heart disease. With this new understanding, the dentist’s role in medicine has been dramatically elevated. Dentists are now responsible for diagnosing and treating gum disease because it is related to diseases that affect other parts of the body, not just the mouth. Is there a causal relationship? Are bacteria that cause periodontal disease also causing heart disease? That seems to be the case.
A recently released book by William D. Nordquist, BS, DMD, MS, The Stealth Killer: Is Oral Spirochetosis the Missing Link in the Dental-Heart Disease Labyrinth? connects the dots from 100-plus years of dental and medical research, establishing a compelling hypothesis to explain the missing link between dental and systemic disease. These are serious questions, and they greatly increase the responsibility of dentists for their patients who need dental implants. An extensive review of the literature, plus eight years of microscopic investigation in Nordquist’s laboratory, reveals some very important clues in the search for the relationship between dental and heart disease. Some important facts are:
1. Both periodontal disease and heart disease are epidemic in the modern age, especially after World War II.
2. More people die of heart disease than all other diseases combined.
3. By the time most people reach a “ripe old age,” they have some form of heart disease.
4. 75 to 80% of people have some form of gum disease.
5. Even though dental disease has been prevalent since the recording of history, it took a very virulent turn during World War I with the high incidence of necrotizing ulcerative gingivitis, also known as Vincent’s infection or trench mouth.
6. Vincent’s infection is primarily a spirochete bacterial infection. Spirochetes are involved with gum disease today.
7. Spirochetes cause other serious diseases, such as Lyme disease, syphilis, and stomach ulcers, as well as other, less-known debilitating diseases.
8. Microscopic research on syphilis in the early 1900s revealed that syphilis has a unique “life cycle.” When the bacteria are treated with an antibiotic or the immune system itself attacks them, they undergo a morphogenetic change and become a “spore.” The disease is almost impossible to completely eradicate. It has also been reported in the older literature that oral spirochetes also produce these “spores.” Research has shown that the Lyme disease Borrelia spirochete also has a similar life cycle and produces “spores” and “cyst” forms.
9. This life cycle of oral bacteria makes the treatment of gum disease very difficult, if not impossible
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