Chief metabolic result

The chief metabolic result is that you avoid the big spike of blood sugar that you get with foods that are loaded with refined carbohydrates. This often produces a significant improvement in blood glucose control. A frequent side effect is that as these foods are digested more slowly, you are satisfied for a longer period of time after each meal. When you’re less hungry, you tend to snack less on high-fat, high refined carb, high-calorie foods that spike your blood glucose and pile on weight.

In fact, I have seen many people with diabetes who get their teeth fixed even start to lose weight, simply because they can eat better foods without oral pain.

If you can keep your diabetes well under control, you have a much better chance of avoiding periodontal diseases. In one national health survey that included thousands of Americans, people with diabetes who kept their blood glucose levels well controlled had no higher risk of developing gum disease than people without diabetes. But those who had diabetes and whose blood sugar was not well controlled had a rate of periodontal disease that was three times higher.

Insulin-dependent diabetes carries a much higher rate of susceptibility to gum disease. One study showed a rate that’s nearly six times higher than in those who don’t have diabetes.

How does diabetes affect susceptibility to periodontal disease? One way is by reducing the effectiveness of the body’s phagocytes. These are cells that can engulf and kill other cells, such as the bacteria that are attacking your gums. With your normal defenses lowered by diabetes, the bacteria are free to establish a beachhead and wreak havoc beneath your gum line.

Another reason why periodontal disease is worse in people with diabetes is the problem of reduced healing capacity. In gum disease, the main effect of this is to lower your ability to repair the tissues that are injured by the inflammation.

This is a particular problem with the periodontal ligaments, which need to be rebuilt with an influx of collagen. One of the most common compounds in the entire animal kingdom, collagen makes up about 30 percent of all the proteins in the human body. One medical expert calls it nature’s re-bar, comparing it with the steel reinforcement rods that are used in concrete construction. The body’s normal response to an injury in connective tissue is to send collagen to the site to repair the defect. If you are already experiencing one of several types of disease states, your body just can’t deposit enough collagen to shore up the periodontal ligament, which then continues to fail as gum disease keeps assaulting it.

If you have a health condition that reduces your body’s normal healing capacity, that can also make your dental treatment more complex. It’s one of the reasons why your dentist needs to know your full history and your current state of health. This is especially true if your dentist needs to do oral surgery to treat your gum disease. Your dentist is almost guaranteed to use non-surgical treatments first, and obviously they won’t do any surgery until you’re able to heal well. This may take a period of medication with antibiotics and nutraceuticals to restore more of your body’s natural ability to heal. We’ll go into more detail about this later.

Gum Disease & Diabetes: The Two Way Street