Bacterial plaque from your mouth is very different than arterial plaque in your blood vessels. Oral plaque is a bacterial biofilm that reforms within 12-24 hours of the last time it was removed through brushing/flossing/rinsing. The mouth will never be a sterile place. Plaque that is a day old is less harmful than plaque that has been in your mouth for a week or more. The “older” plaque produces toxins that sit around your gums and cause inflammation. When you go to brush and floss your teeth, your gums will probably bleed. Some of this bacteria does get into your bloodstream, but your body’s immune response clears the vast majority of it. Arterial plaque is mostly composed of fatty acids and cholesterol. They HAVE found oral bacteria trapped within the layers of arterial plaque. It creates inflammation in the lining of the blood vessel and can cause the fatty capsule of arterial plaque to rupture and create a clot. This clot can trigger a heart attack. There are cases of people whose blood vessel lumens seem completely open and unblocked from fatty deposits. It’s the layer of arterial plaque within the layers of the blood vessel that are the danger. Currently, most physicians only do tests that check if you have blood vessel blockages. There IS a test to see if there are fatty deposits within the layers of the vessels. Also, ask your physician to test your C reactive protein, which measures your inflammation levels. People with gum disease usually have high inflammation levels.
good post!
I never said that the plaques on the teeth and the plaques in the blood vessels and arteries or elsewhere are the same, or even that dental plaques are caused by spirochete infection. They aren’t. Spirochetes along with many other oral fauna hide under dental plaques making them hard to get at when attempting to clean out without first removing the plaque.
As for the body’s immune system’s ability to handle these bacteria, we’ve watched a single oral spirochete invade a healthy leukocyte and over the space of a couple hours, kill the leukocyte, then leave to go on about its business. That doesn’t bode well for the normal mode of defense for bacteria.
Our head doctor, one of the top dental implantologists in the world, has more alphabet soup following his title than we can fit on his letter head, as do many of the other dentists, medical doctors, and medical and dental professors who have been signing on to these findings. Read the peer-reviewed papers cited by Dr. Judit McKlosky, M.D., President of the European Alzheimer’s Prevention Society, which my 2011 FreeRepublic post linked. There have been more since then.