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Tooth loss, bleeding gums and other symptoms of poor dental health could be indicative of declining thinking skills amongst middle-aged people, a study shows. The study, conducted by professors at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, was attempting to deduce a possible correlation between poor dental health and poor cognitive function, meaning how well people do with memory and managing words and numbers. “What we found was that for every extra tooth that a person had lost or had removed, cognitive function went down a bit,” Slade said. “People who had none of their teeth had poorer cognitive function than people who did have teeth, and people with fewer teeth had poorer cognition than those with more”, stated study co-author Gary Slade, a professor in the department of dental ecology at UNC Chapel Hill. “The same was true when we looked at patients with severe gum disease,” he said. In order to explore the aforementioned connection, the authors collected and analyzed data gathered between 1996 and 1998 that included tests for memory and thinking skills, as well as tooth and gum examinations, conducted amongst nearly 6,000 men and women between the ages of 45 and 64. Roughly 13% of participants had no natural teeth, and among those with teeth, one-fifth had less than twenty remaining (a typical adult has 32 teeth, including wisdom teeth). More than 12% had deep gum pockets and serious bleeding issues. The researchers found in the data that scores on memory and cognition tests — which included aspects such as word recall, word fluency, and skill with numbers — were lower by all measures among those without teeth versus those who had teeth. The researchers additionally found that those with fewer teeth and serious gum bleeding issues were associated with poorer test scores when compared with those who did not suffer from bleeding gum issues and had more teeth.
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