Not brushing your teeth can trigger dementia and heart disease

[Nick]

I brush once a day at night because i cbf in the morning

[Sian]

"Daily Mail"

^^

Daily mail scare mongering again. Probably a load of bull.

[Empired]

Ok yes we can all agree that brushing your teeth is going to be bad in the long run, but saying "I brush my teeth so I'm safe" (@mdport.; ;l although I'm sure you were kidding there are still probably a lot of people who read this article away from HxF who actually thought the same so this isn't aimed at you at all) is just crazy.

For starters, you could brush your teeth twice a day every single day of your life and still develop dementia just because of your genes. There are loads of things you can try and do to prevent dementia (stay mentally and physically active, have a good diet, etc. Basically be healthy) but you could do all of those things and still develop it. Just like you can be the most road safe person in the world and take huge precautions but still end up in a car crash because there are always going to be elements out of your control.

And anyway, is this a cause or a correlation? I struggle to see how not brushing your teeth specifically leads to dementia? Even arguing that it weakens your immune system confuses me as you can't "catch" dementia like you could catch a cold? Unless they're talking about things like Lyme Disease, but I wouldn't call that dementia (not sure why anyone would), I'd call it Lyme Disease. If someone would like to enlighten me as to how that works I'd be grateful.

I missed out talking about heart disease here because although your DNA can still lead to you being at greater risk, prevention is more obvious as it's do to with physical health and the risk is clearly much lower if a person changes their lifestyle.