Healthy teeth, tooth loss, cavities, and damaged teeth can provide doctors and scientists with information about other parts of our bodies.

This is what a recent study from Arizona State University confirmed in a study focused on the Tsimane people, where evolutionary anthropologists and bioarchaeologists found that poor oral health led to increased levels of inflammation, increased brain volume. (dementia) and calcification of the aortic valve (cardiovascular disease). ).

But how exactly does poor oral health affect our hearts and brains?

Evolutionary anthropologist Ben Trumbull and his colleagues think this could happen in several ways. First, bacteria can enter the bloodstream and cause inflammation, which can lead to chewing problems and malnutrition.

Trumbull, an associate professor in Arizona State University’s Department of Human Evolution and Social Change, Institute for Human Origins, and Center for Evolutionary Medicine, explained why the study focused on the Tsimane people, an indigenous people of the Bolivian Amazon. .

“In the United States, people living in low-socioeconomic status settings are often at higher risk for both age-related chronic diseases and a lack of access to dental insurance and appropriate dental care,” Trumbull said. he said.

“People living in low socio-economic situations often don’t have access to cheap, healthy food or safe places to exercise, and they don’t have the time to cook or train at home. “Structural barriers make them not only more likely than other people to suffer from chronic diseases such as cardiovascular disease, but also more likely to have poor dental health,” he said.

“In the United States, it is very difficult to disentangle the role of oral health in chronic disease. The Tsimane are much lower on the socioeconomic gradient and have little access to modern dental care. This allows us to examine the relationship between oral health and chronic disease without confounding oral health.”

Trumbull and his colleagues at the Tsimane Health and Life History Project have been working with the Tsimane people for more than 20 years. This relationship is not a helicopter study. This project brought access to healthcare to this subsistence population and led to many discoveries about heart health, dementia, brain volume, and now oral health.

Trumbull explained that the oral health research actually came from a request by the Tsimane people for access to dental care.

“In order to apply for future grants and seek support from the various health institutions in Bolivia, we first need to collect preliminary data to understand that there is a large unmet need for dental care in this population and that I needed to show that I was making an important impact. I was healthy,” Trumbull said.

“Thanks to this research, we are increasing awareness of the link between oral health and chronic disease in the United States, and we are working with local Bolivian dentists to provide dental care to the Tsimane people in the coming months. It’s starting.

Trumbull collaborated on this project with two world-class dental researchers: Gary Schwartz, an evolutionary anthropologist and professor in the School of Human Evolution and Social Change, and Christopher Stoyanowski, a professor and bioarchaeologist. did.

Schwartz spent his career doing something that most of us only think about twice a day when brushing our teeth.

“Teeth contain your entire life history, with markers that tell you when you were born and when important events early in your life occurred, such as bouts of illness, for example,” he says. Told. “They really are an incredible window into our biology and health.”

“What really struck me about this project was that it clearly revealed the connections between oral health, heart health, and cognitive health. “This means that the link between oral health and heart health holds true even in populations known to have minimal levels of cardiovascular disease and dementia,” Schwartz said.

“Eyes may be the window to the soul, but it turns out teeth are the window to the heart and brain,” he says.

The paper, “Poor oral hygiene is associated with inflammation, aortic valve calcification, and brain volume in foragers,” was published in The Journals of Gerontology, Series A: Biological Sciences and Medical Sciences.