I DO not know anyone who never feels “stressed-out”. Stress upsets our normal bodily functions. How we react to outside stimuli affects both our physical and mental health. Stress causes a cycle, which perpetuates even more stress. When you encounter problems and experience anxiety and stress as a result, you may neglect yourself and then, in turn, your health can fail in many different ways. This can lead to more stress. Your mouth can be an important part of this whole process.
Everyone experiences stress on a daily basis. An important lesson to learn is not to immerse yourself in stress, but to work to separate yourself from it. You can achieve this by realizing that stress is apart from who you are, and thereby mentally detaching yourself from the problem. Then try to work out the problem with the use of objective, intelligent choices.
The experience of stress does affect your mouth and gums negatively, but your health will noticeably improve as you eliminate stress, or its negative impact, from your life.
From a scientific point, stress is a result of an endocrine and hormonal imbalance. It affects the normal balance of your body, and can lead to gum disease. The mouth mirrors many conditions of the body, especially those caused by stress. Headaches, which are usually stress-related, can restrict blood flow to the head. As a result of the loss of blood flow, you can get a headache. Chronic stress can lead to gum disease by reducing the strength of the immune system, which leads to growth of bacterial plaque. This bacterial plaque can invade the gum structure and lead to loose, inflamed tissue, as well as possible bone loss.
If you are stressed out and not paying much attention to your body’s needs, you may be the victim of a poor diet, an important factor in gum disease. Most people who are under the influence of stress eat improperly. Your diet may consist of quick bites of food, sugar, or alcohol, and reduced intake of fluids.
If you eat a high-sugar diet, you are certain to have more acidic saliva, and probably will be a candidate for bacterial plaque. The bacterial plaque will irritate your gums and be a cause of gum disease. Alcohol has a high sugar content, and also diminishes the saliva flow, which is the cause of gum disease or tooth decay.
If you drink less water and so take in less fluid because of stress, you may notice your saliva thickening. This can cause plaque to attach quickly to the tooth’s structure. Plaque feasts on the fragile gum tissue, and eats away at the bone supporting the teeth.
Stress can also cause bad physical habits that can wreak havoc on your mouth. Have you ever been in the supermarket, waiting in line for what seems an eternity, and noticed that the person in front of your is overusing his jaws? You can tell by the facial musculature. Grinding and clenching of your teeth can loosen them, and the pressure it produces can irritate the supporting gum tissue.
In children, a loose baby tooth can cause the gum to also become loose and swollen. Well, when you grind and clench your adult teeth, you are loosening them; and this can have the same effect as a loose baby tooth: It can cause loose, irritated gum tissue, which can result in gum disease and eventual tooth loss.
Colds are also a direct effect of a weakened immune system. With colds and allergies affecting our immune system, the mouth can become a secondary target, with the resulting effect of gum disease.
However, positive stress can help our health and reduce anxiety. What is positive stress? Well, stressful situations can lead us to challenge our spirit and sometimes leave us healthier. It’s how we react to stress that is important. If you handle your problems well, you may achieve a healthier immune system.
All in all, however, I would suggest that you try to minimize the stress in your life, for it can play havoc not only with your gums, but on other organs such as your heart. Although stress may not be considered a disease, it can be the aggravating factor for such conditions as allergies, arthritis, asthma, cancer, colitis, ulcers, heart disease, and various nerve conditions. These conditions can all have an effect on your gum tissue.
As mentioned earlier, stress may lead you away from good daily gum and tooth care. You may be preoccupied with your problems, and so neglect your body. However, you can start to release your frustrations through positive manipulation of the gum tissue. Think about how good a massage feels. It can relax you. If you spend a minute or two in the morning with gum massage, you will relax your mouth and heal the gum tissue.
The mind-body-spirit connection to stress embraces the probability that stress can contribute to illness. In a positive state, the mind promotes better immune functioning for the body. Our will, or spirit, contributes to our wellbeing. Depression can lead to ill health and bad habits that can lead to disease. If your spirit is low, it can lower the immune system and bring on disease. Stress comes from lack of hope, and leads to negative or ill health. Ill health can cause more stress. If you are under stress, use your mind to control your experience of stress.
While negative thoughts cause a lowering of the immune system and disease, positive thoughts can enhance the immune system. It is the spirit within us that needs to guide us positively. Use the mind-body-spirit connection to transform stress into positive energy. Life is a series of lessons to be learned, and once they are learned, their adversity can disappear.
The mind-body-spirit connection can control the level of stress. If a problem exists and you do your daily cleaning routine, emphasizing your health first, it will help you put stress into proper perspective.Feelings of hope and renewed optimism can promote better immune function for the body. Hope and optimism reduce fear, and allow the body to move in a positive direction.
Stress and its connection to oral health are not addressed in textbooks, or scientifically recorded. I have observed that many of my patients, however, when tired and stressed out, seem to have puffy and swollen gum tissue. After changing jobs or returning from vacations, these same patients suddenly have remarkably healthy tissue.
Stress-related problems have been studied in dentistry, and the findings in many countries are that when there is less stress, there are fewer problems with teeth and gums. If you find that your jaws are tight when you awake, you may be clenching and grinding your teeth in your sleep. The grinding and clenching of teeth is a habit called bruxism, and it is caused by stress.
Clenching is a continuous or periodic closing of the jaw under vertical pressure when you clench and grind them. The constant moving of your teeth back and forth while grinding will loosen the teeth. If you grind and clench your teeth, you may find yourself with a condition called temporomandibular joint disorder (TMJ).
The tempotomandibular joint is the hinge and socket that allow the mouth to open and close. The jaw can sometimes lock into position, limiting your mouth in opening and closing. Or you may hear clicking sounds, indicating that the TMJ is not working as smoothly as it should.
Grinding or clenching your teeth inhibits the correct movement of this joint. Stretching the ligaments creates problems for the TMJ joint, and can even affect your gum condition. It can inhibit your ability to do proper oral hygiene and can cause pain, leading to stress in your mouth and causing you to feel uncomfortable.