With the start of a new year, quite a few of us get health goals in mind.
Even if you didn’t make any formal resolutions, you still may have found yourself thinking at least occasionally about ways you can improve in 2025. Maybe you’ve thought about how it might help to eat more whole foods, less ultra-processed junk. Or to move more, even if you aren’t ready to commit to regular exercise. Perhaps you’ve envisioned better ways of managing daily stress.
The small choices you make each day add up, for better or for worse. Do you reach for water or a soda when you’re thirsty? Do you guzzle coffee or energy drinks to stay alert or follow a routine that supports good quality sleep? Do you go for a walk after dinner or flop on the couch and binge watch your evening away?
Such choices impact more than your physical health, of course. They can make a difference for your oral health, too, as shown by a new study in Scientific Reports.
The study centered on data from nearly 8000 adults who took part in the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) between 2009 and 2024. Specifically, the research team focused on data related to Life’s Essential 8 (LE8). This scoring system, developed by the American Heart Association, measures how healthy a person’s lifestyle is, with scores ranging from 0 to 100.
Analysis showed that adults with LE8 scores over 50 were 55 to 58% less likely to have gum disease compared to people with lower scores.
That’s something that can translate to a lower risk of the many systemic health problems that have been linked to poor periodontal health – from heart disease and stroke to chronic kidney disease, rheumatoid arthritis to Alzheimer’s and even some cancers.
But we digress.
The current study found that four factors in particular appeared to have an especially big impact on periodontal health. Smoking, of course, was number one, accounting for roughly 62% of the impact. (Tobacco use is the #1 risk factor for gum disease.)
It’s also no surprise that blood sugar levels had the next biggest impact, at 18.2%, as the two-way relationship between diabetes and gum disease is well established. Sleep health and blood pressure were also found to play big roles, with each accounting for about 8% of the total impact.
Interestingly, the benefits of a healthy lifestyle were most noticeable in the gum health of people between 40 and 60 years old.
“Our findings,” concluded the research team,
highlight the interconnectedness between oral and systemic health. Fostering lifestyle habits through improving diet, increasing physical activity, avoiding tobacco, and better managing blood pressure, cholesterol, and glucose levels may profoundly impact periodontitis risks.
Perhaps that thought could give you a little extra motivation on those days when you feel like you just don’t have the time, energy, or will to eat right or exercise or otherwise make choices that support your whole body health and well-being.
Both mouth and body can benefit from the healthy choices you make. It’s as simple as that.
