You’ve got your granola in one hand, and your workout schedule in the other. The goal is a healthy you. While you may have mastered most of the components of a healthy lifestyle, there is an often neglected aspect of health that can lead to potentially serious health risks, your mouth.

It is echoed repeatedly by health magazines, doctors, and other health professionals, the importance of yearly physicals and health checks. Why? Because preventative medicine does just as it says, it prevents and protects against worsening disease. If you can catch a health problem early enough, it can often be reversed or be easily treated and controlled. If unchecked, potential problems can blossom into significant health problems. The same applies with the oft neglected mouth.

Few things can affect one’s physical, social, and emotional state as profoundly as a healthy or unhealthy, smile. Researched shows that the first three things noticed about someone’s appearance are their hair, teeth, and eyes. As a dentist I have seen people exude confidence and vigor with a bright, clean smile, as well as noted the downcast eyes of someone with gum disease too embarrassed to take their hand from their mouth to talk. How do these contrasting states spill over into the workplace, at home, at parties, or at church? How many job opportunities have been lost because an unhealthy mouth marred that all important first impression. The value of a beautiful, healthy smile cannot be underestimated.

Even though a great smile is a wonderful thing, and can open many doors to you, a healthy smile has more lasting positive effects on longevity and quality of life. It was recently discovered that the mouth is in fact, connected to the rest of the body. (Shocking!) While that may seem obvious, I meet people every day that don’t realize that as their mouth goes, so goes the body. There is the outdated belief that, “if my teeth don’t hurt, there must not be anything wrong.” In reality, by the time you feel pain in the mouth, it is often too late, and indicative of a serious health risk. It has been found that unhealthy teeth and gums are correlated to increase risk of heart attack, stroke, diabetes, pre-term birth in pregnancy, low birth weight, and more. It is believed that young children who have a hard time focusing in school often don’t have behavioral issues, but rather teeth issues. Their teeth hurt. Most people fail to realize that plaque on the teeth and plaque in the arteries are caused by some of the same bacteria. People with diabetes, after a deep teeth cleaning often see an improvement with their disease. If your hands bled every time you washed them, you would run to the hospital immediately, and yet, if gums bleed when they are brushed, people often dismiss it as normal or o.k. It’s not. That is a sign of gum disease.

Since your health is at the forefront of your priorities, call your dentist. Make that appointment for a healthier mouth, and a healthier you. You’ll be happy you did, and you’ll have a great smile to prove it.

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Dr. Blake Shreeve, DMD is a practicing dentist at Superstition Lakes Dental, 2500 S Power Rd., Suite 131, Mesa, AZ 85209. He welcomes questions and can be reached at 480-924-5577, or by email at dr.blake@superstitionlakesdental.com.