Not brushing your teeth can cause Rheumatoid Arthritis

alanthemanc

I was reading that awful paper the Daily Mail, when a headline surprised me. Apparantly, some scientist in Germany has said there's a link with tooth decay, and gum disease, to R.A.
I presume it is more relevent to kids, but I always brushed my teeth, but still got R.A. was 16. He also says R.A. sufferers have worse teeth than others, you learn something every day eh. Alanthemanc

valval

i have always brushed my teeth as well mind you do not know for sure which arther i have???? i could understand the bad teeth bit with all the inflimation going on in body must affect gums as well ??????. and holding tooth brush for 2 mins not easy even with electric one at times val

frogmorton

Hmmmph!!!

How very dare they? :shock:

alanthemanc

Frog / Valval

Yeh, this seems odd when probably millions of pounds have been put into arthritis research, yet this guy comes up with this connection. I would put it down to the acid in your saliva causing a reaction to your blood antibodies. Too late for me now, the damage has been done, but brush those teeth folks. Alanthemanc

tillytop

I have just read this article and something which occurs to me is that one of the reasons why people with RA have a higher incidence of gum disease is that they often have a dry mouth, either as a result of secondary Sjogrens syndrome (another auto-immune disesase where the body attacks its own salivary glands) or due to meds. As to whether this can cause RA in the first place - well I'm a tad sceptical to say the least.

But interesting read Alanthemanc - thanks for flagging it up.

Tilly xxx