Your dentist can track your bone health.
Another reason to see your dentist regularly is that he might be able to help detect the early signs of “Osteoporosis,” say doctors at Hiroshima University Hospital. Dentist Akira Taguchi and colleagues studied the dental x-rays of 316 healthy post-menopausal women, and then measured spinal bone density to assess their risk of the bone-crippling disease.
What they found was that the women who suffered bone loss in the jaw had also lost bone in their spines. The dental x-rays were up to 87 per cent effective in identifying women with spinal osteoporosis.
Many men and women are unaware they have low bone density. Screening by dentists, who can be trained to recognize erosion in the jaw, could be an important step in identifying osteoporosis of the spine, says Taguchi. These x-rays, which most patients get routinely, are relatively inexpensive and make it easy to spot changes from year to year. Live long and prosper.
|
