Oral Health as a Gateway to Overall Health for Children

One extremely important part of healthcare that often gets forgotten is our mouth and teeth. Dental care is actually directly related to overall health! If you think about it, it makes sense—the mouth is the entry point to both the digestive tract (stomach) and the respiratory tract (lungs) and is also open to the outside world, so it’s the first place for disease-causing bacteria to enter your body.

Your oral health is linked to several important health conditions, including endocarditis (infection of the inner lining of your heart), cardiovascular disease (we don’t fully understand this connection but it is seen), pregnancy complications such as premature birth and low birth weight, and pneumonia.(source)

Oral health, apart from affecting school and work attendance and our basic self-esteem, is also important because cavities, gum disease, and oral infections cause millions of Americans pain and disability.

The maintenance of good oral health should begin in early childhood. More than half the children between six and eight years of age in the US already have at least one cavity. Even though those baby teeth do fall out, the bacteria that cause the cavity tend to persist and can infect the subsequent permanent teeth. Consequently, more than half of adolescents also have at least one cavity in their permanent teeth. (source) The good news is, those cavities are preventable!

February is National Children’s Dental Health Month. As a pediatrician and Medical Director at Healthfirst, I want to share with you tips for your child’s oral hygiene.

1. PREVENT CAVITIES: If you are a caregiver of a baby, wipe baby’s gums with a soft cloth after feedings even before teeth are present. Babies should not be allowed to keep a bottle or the breast in their mouth for prolonged periods—feed, wipe, and switch to a pacifier if you need to calm your baby. Also, clean pacifiers frequently with soapy water, and never put them in your mouth to ‘clean’ them off.
2. FIRST TOOTH: Once the first tooth erupts, you should begin to brush with a soft baby brush twice a day using FLUORIDE toothpaste. Yes, actual adult (or kid) paste that contains fluoride: an amount the size of a rice grain for infants, an amount the size of a pea once they are two years and up, morning and night, AFTER everything they eat/drink. Pediatricians once said no fluoride, but its benefits are so great that now we encourage it in small amounts.
3. FIRST DENTAL VISIT: A baby should see the dentist by their first birthday (or first tooth, as some babies have no teeth still at age one!). The things pediatric dentists could discover by looking at just one or two teeth always amazed me. Additionally, kids should start to receive a fluoride varnish application by the dentist or pediatrician twice a year starting at age one.
4. ORAL DEVELOPMENT: One last piece that is crucial to cavity prevention is this: get rid of the bottle after a year (and all those sippy cups that are basically bottles). Switch to straw cups for on the go and open cups at home (messy at first but better for oral motor development and teeth). Babies no longer need constant milk or liquid at this point and should drink only water outside of the two or three times a day they have milk. This will do more for cavity prevention (and obesity prevention!) than any other intervention.

At Healthfirst, we seek to address health disparities that commonly impact the communities we serve. We know they are even more at risk of poor oral health. For children aged two to five years, about 33% of Mexican American and 28% of non-Hispanic Black children have had cavities in their primary teeth, compared with 18% of non-Hispanic White children. For children aged 12 to 19, nearly 70% of Mexican American children have had cavities in their permanent teeth, compared with 54% of non-Hispanic White children. For children aged two to five years, 17% of children from low-income households have untreated cavities in their primary teeth, three times the percentage of children from higher-income households. (source) These disparities persist into adulthood, leading to adults with two to three times higher risk of cavities, gum disease, and loss of all of their teeth. (source)

Oral health is really the gateway to overall health. Make sure you and your kids get to the dentist at least twice a year from age one to age one hundred (more often if you’re pregnant or have dental issues). For more information:

Oral Health | CDC

AAPD | Parent

Oral health: A window to your overall health - Mayo Clinic

About the Author

Maja Castillo MD, MHA is an AVP Pediatric Medical Director at Healthfirst.