IT has been noted in interdisciplinary research into the human ageing process (gerontology) that it is the effects of disease, and not ageing itself, that are most significant for the perceptions of ourselves and others as either “youthful” or “elderly”. We should therefore not fear age, but we should be aware of health hazards. But then again, why is it that, no matter how wealthy we are or how many medical resources we have access to, we still die, even of “old age”? How come?
Although the major problems encountered in dentistry are generally commensurate with the patient’s ageing, widespread misconceptions about these implications persist.
One of the first questions that patients must answer on a visit to the dentist is how old they are! We love to classify people by age. However, the date of birth can become more significant than the individual.
Older adults do not lose their teeth because they have grown old. They lose them because of diseases, with oral ills often mirroring general ones. Remember, disease risk increases with age.
Dental disease and changes in saliva and mucous membranes may be early signs of declining general health in older adults. These may indicate a weakening of the tissues’ biological defence thresholds for different stresses. Few tissues in the human body must withstand what the oral tissues must, not only in terms of possible dryness, but also mechanically, chemically, thermally, microbially and galvanically (electrically).
Oral tissues occasionally show relatively specific signs of systemic illness and negative social habits, but more often show less characteristic reaction patterns that cannot be diagnosed immediately. These are, however, usually specific to the individual and thus form a kind of biological “fingerprint” which changes with variations in health.
The vital point is that we are all biologically unique individuals from birth and become increasingly functionally diverse until we are very old. We must sooner or later “pay” for the way we have used our biological resources. The way we pay has to do with our genetic make-up and the combined influence of the accumulated consequences of many years of physiological changes, bouts of illness, use and abuse of medications, risky lifestyles and wanton neglect of our bodies. From a psychological point of view, we become caricatures of ourselves in later years, and invariably we must take the blame. So, the core point is that, regardless of age or circumstance, we should visit the dentist of our choice and “take it from there”.
