Should you go on a NOISE diet?

MY dental health is something I have always taken seriously — and as a gadget f an, I’ve s pent hundreds of pounds on the latest high-tech electronic toothbrushes and expensive toothpastes, gels and mouthwashes.

But then I had to go without brushing my teeth for a fortnight.

This was for a new two-part series on dental health for the BBC, and what we discovered was truly eye-opening, with implications not just for me, but for all of us.

My wife was anything but keen on the nobrushing experiment and there was a lot less kissing during that fortnight. And she was right to be worried about the outcome. For two weeks, I wore a gum guard on one side of my mouth whenever I brushed my teeth, so that side didn’t get cleaned.

At the end of this time, I brushed my teeth without the gum guard on and my gums bled a bit and there was pink, bloodspattered spit in the bathroom washbowl. I had developed mild gum disease. Carry on like this and not treat the problem and I could theoretically lose some teeth.

so what’s new in that, you might think? not much. But something much more significant had also happened to me.

Tests conducted with Professor Iain Chapple, at the university of Birmingham school of Dentistry, showed that by not brushing my teeth for just two weeks I had damaged my immune system. Lab tests using my white blood cells — the soldiers of the immune system — showed they had become less effective at moving towards an infectious invader when it was introduced to them.

Instead of heading straight towards the invader to attack it, the white cells were heading there slowly in random, inefficient ways.

This result indicated that my whole body had become inflamed as a result of an infection in my gums.

Inflammation is the medical term for our body’s reaction to infection — typically seen on the outside of the body as red, swollen tissue.

When that reaction is short-term, it is a healthy response. But when our body is constantly reacting to chronic damage or infection — such as long-term gum disease — it can push our i mmune system i nto damaging overdrive that sets off chain reactions that cause harm throughout our bodies.

This can be seen in the way that my white blood cells became less effective. But chronic inflammation can also damage other cells throughout the body, such as our organs and circulatory system.

BAD GUMS COULD LEAD TO DIABETES

A sWAThe of recent science has revealed that if you have chronic inflammation, it will seriously affect the rest of your health and your life.

It i s strongly l i nked with the development of illnesses such as heart disease, type 2 diabetes, Alzheimer’s, stroke and cancer.

Professor Chapple reassured me this inflammation is completely reversible if you induce it for only a couple of weeks. But if you leave gum disease for significantly longer, you will be doing yourself chronic, irreversible damage.

Gum disease isn’t just bad for your teeth, it shortens your life — simple as that. so, looking after your teeth is one of the most important health interventions you can make.

however, this area is something that few doctors know about.

even as an infectious diseases specialist, I knew almost nothing about teeth before I did these programmes. It’s not something you learn about at medical school.

This crucial connection between the health of your gums and the health of your entire body i s relatively neglected by doctors. As a result, we miss many opportunities to educate patients about the importance of dental care.

This makes it even more vital that children learn the habit of brushing teeth properly at a young age.

As a way of setting them up for a healthy life, it is better than breastfeeding, probably as effective as vaccination and as important as good nutrition.

But if you leave children to their own devices, they don’t brush their teeth correctly, as we discovered when making this BBC series. We’re meant to spend two minutes on the task. But a five-year-old can’t judge what two minutes is, so they won’t brush for anything near that long. The answer is to supervise children’s tooth-brushing (though you can get gadgets such as apps and waterproof stopwatches for the bathroom to help them time it).

But it’s not just about timing; how you brush is just as important. serpil Djemal, the clinical lead at King’s College, London, dental unit, advises ‘ tickling’ ( light brushing) every surface of every tooth.

£1 BRUSH IS AS GOOD AS ELECTRIC

BuT having healthy teeth isn’t just about teeth brushing. Very few of us get to the age of 30 without having