Oral Health, Heart Disease, and Fermented Foods

Seth Roberts

From the abstract of a 2007 paper about oral health and heart disease:

The high prevalence of cardiovascular diseases (CVD) and infections of the mouth has led to the hypothesis that these disease entities [are] connected. Oral biofilms contain numerous micro-organisms with more than 700 identified species. . . . These micro-organisms cause dental caries and periodontal disease of which the majority of humans suffer during their life. Oral bacteria are presumed to gain access to the blood circulation and are postulated to trigger systemic reactions by up-regulating a variety of cytokines and inflammatory mediators. Infection and inflammation play a role also in atherogenesis. Furthermore, traces of oral micro-organisms, such as the gram-negative anaerobic bacterium Porphyromonas gingivalis, have been detected in atheroma plaques. This bacterium seems to be potentially atherogenic in animal models. Epidemiologic data have shown a statistical association between periodontal disease and coronary heart disease and stroke. In a meta-analysis, the odds ratio increase for CVD in persons with periodontal disease was almost 20%. Poor oral health also seems to be associated with all-cause mortality.

Emphasis added. As I blogged earlier, during my last trip to the dentist I was told my gums were in great shape, better than the previous visit — and the only intentional change since the previous visit was a huge increase (a factor of 50?) in how much fermented food I eat. So perhaps fermented foods improve oral health. A reason to suspect that fermented foods reduce heart disease is that Eskimos, with very low rates of heart disease, eat lots of fermented food. If both these ideas are true — fermented foods improve gum health and reduce heart disease — it would explain the observed correlation between gum disease and heart disease.

A vast number of people believe that sugar and refined flour are bad for us. In large amounts, sure, because they cause so much dysregulation (e.g., high blood sugar) and in ditto foods cause obesity. But what about average amounts? Here I’m not so sure. The shift to a diet high in sugar and refined flours has usually happened at the same time as a shift away from traditional diets. In other words, the increase in sugar and flour wasn’t the only change. I suspect there was usually a great reduction in fermented foods at the same time. Maybe the reduction in fermented foods caused the trouble rather than the increase in sugar and flour. The reduction in fermented foods is almost always ignored – for example, by Weston Price and John Yudkin (author of Sweet and Dangerous).

Probiotics and oral health. An experiment about probiotics and oral health.

6 thoughts on “Oral Health, Heart Disease, and Fermented Foods”

  1. ISTR a study linking poor oral health and some problem during pregnancy.

    Wine and beer are both fermented, do they have any benefit or does the fact the fermentation kills the bacteria negate it?

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  2. Hi Seth, your comment about shifting diet patterns potentially obscuring the effects of a high sugar/refined carb diet reminds me of the basic ceteris parabus assumption in economics, which means ‘all other things being equal’, or which I define as a ‘an impossibly fantastical state of affairs that can never exist in reality’.

    Going back to the refined sugars/carbs story, I guess this is something that can and has been tested in experiments but in terms of public understanding the risk must surely be skewed toward a potential over emphasis of this factor in negative health outcomes and obesity, simply because of the potential for a spurious correlation.

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  3. I saw a potentially relevant article on saliva and bacteria in CNN recently:

    https://www.cnn.com/2009/HEALTH/03/03/saliva.spit.survey/index.html?iref=mpstoryview

    A quote:

    Since people have different eating habits in different places, you might think an American’s saliva might look a lot different from, say, a South African’s. But a new study published in the journal Genome Research finds that bacteria in saliva may not be as related to environment and diet as you might think.

    In fact, researchers found that the human salivary microbiome — that is, the community of bacteria in saliva — does not vary greatly between different geographic locations. That means your saliva is just as different from your neighbor’s as someone’s on the other side of the planet.

    …

    Americans in particular have a lot of amylase in their saliva because their diets are full of starch: chips, rice and baked potatoes. But the Pygmies of central Africa, for example, eat mostly game animals, honey and fruit. They have relatively little amylase in their saliva.

    Dominy and colleagues found these differences at the genetic level, meaning natural selection has favored large quantities of amylase in populations with starchy diets.

    But there is also evidence that amylase levels can rise and fall within an individual’s lifetime. A study on college students in Ghana, who typically eat a lot of meat at the university, found that students who had grown up eating traditional starchy Ghanaian home-cooked meals had lower levels of amylase after attending the school.

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  4. I wonder if using antiseptic mouthwash (e.g., Listerine TM) reduces the effects of probiotics on oral health.

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  6. Many fermented foods are high in vitamin K2. I wouldn’t be surprised if that would effect periodontal health.

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