A surgeon and a dental health expert has shared how people with diabetes could treat and improve their condition. Dr Alp Kantarci spoke on the Zoe podcast and his advice was described as “amazing” that could have a positive impact on diabetes.
The scientist, dentist, oral health researcher, periodontist, dental implant surgeon, and senior staff member at the Forsyth Institute, an independent research institute, stated that the condition was known to be linked with gum disease.
He noted that oral health is one of the six main indicators of diabetes symptoms, affecting all forms of the disease. He explained that taking action can have a positive impact, reports Gloucestershire Live.
He said: “Diabetes was the first disease that was connected to gum disease. Back in the 1990s studies have shown that if you have diabetes, regardless of the type of diabetes, you will have gums that are bleeding.
“So that’s important. So, oral health or the periodontal disease is one of the six major indicators or major symptoms of diabetes.
“So that’s one of the major problems there and in reverse what we have found and what the studies have shown so far is that gum disease can also make the diabetes get worse.
“So there are interventional studies there which treated periodontal disease, gum disease and we’re able to reduce your diabetic disease.
“So, if you treat the gum disease in a patient with diabetes, you can reduce your blood sugar levels, haemoglobin, A1C levels that can help our medical colleagues to treat diabetes.”
Zoe App CEO Jonathan Wolf was stunned at the revelation and said: “I just want to make sure I’ve got that because I’ve never heard that before.
“And it’s really amazing – you’re saying someone has diabetes, which is, an incredibly serious disease with this enormous number of people, who have it today, who are living with it today, and you’re saying that for those people who also have some sort of oral health problem, if you treat that oral health problem, actually, suddenly their blood sugar control gets better.
“The intensity if you like of the diabetes is actually reduced, is that, is that right? Which is extraordinary.”
And Dr Kantarci confirmed the suggestion, saying: “It is. But it’s also proven. That’s why I started with diabetes because diabetes sets as the basis of all of our systemic disease.”
He explained what people needed to do to improve their health condition: “So you treat two things. Number one, you reduce the bacterial load by treating gum disease.
“But the second one is that you’re also reducing your inflammatory burden on your body by treating gum disease.
“So your inflammatory burden is one of the reasons why your diabetes gets worse. Your blood sugar goes up, your haemoglobin A one C levels go up and your response to diabetic treatments or diabetic drugs and so on and so forth will be completely impaired.
“So and it’s not trivial because if you and this is the humbling moment that the dentist becomes a part of the medical team because we’re not treating diabetes.
“We treat our own diseases.
“We treat our teeth, we treat our gums, we treat our oral cavity, but we can help our medical colleagues treat their patients better if the patients are treated by us too.”