The evening included a screening of the hour-long documentary “Say Ahh.” Trailers for the film say it is about “fighting the world’s largest cavity — the one in our health care system.”
The film touts “complete health dentistry” where dentists look beyond their patient’s mouth and gums. Doctors, in turn, need to be more direct with their patients about the risks from poor oral health, the film says, suggesting both providers should work more closely together. Such a proactive approach to health care could stop the decline in American’s health and save billions of dollars in costs, according to “Say Ahh.”
The evening was sponsored by Contemporary Dentistry, which has offices in Canton and in Dearborn at 5211 Schaefer Road. Drs. Nader Bazzi, Rima Bazzi and Julie Atoui all graduated from the University of Detroit-Mercy Dental School. The two practices tout themselves as being “focused on complete dental health.”
The three dentists stress the connection between oral and overall health, Nader Bazzi said.
“I’m a dentist that is really passionate about my field,” he said.
Michigan ranks 34th in the country for overall health, and many of the state’s risk factors such as diabetes, are impacted by oral health, Bazzi told the crowd of more than 70 people.
He sympathized with the doctors he had invited saying he knows most are overworked, pressed for time, and see their profit margins shrinking with health care reforms. However, focusing on oral health is a key to reducing health care costs and improving patients’ overall health and quality of life, he said.
“We have the ability to really affect change,” Bazzi said.
Dr. Chip Whitney, a family care doctor from Pennsylvania, also spoke. Whitney appears in “Say Ahh” arguing for the importance of looking at oral health.
He has had several cases of patients with diseases, especially heart disease and stroke, who cannot seem to improve their health until they get oral issues addressed.
Often, after patients started regular dentist visits to address periodontal disease, all of their other health statistics “spun in the right directions,” he said.
He showed a book that he said contained more than 1,000 studies, some very comprehensive, that showed a strong link between oral health and overall or systemic health.
“If there’s a little blood in the sink, you’ve got a problem,” he said.
In the movie, Whitney says that he feels medicine is entering its third age. The first focused on trying to combat infections, which was followed in more modern times by huge advances in treating illnesses, including vaccines. In the new age, the focus needs to be on preventing illnesses, and that has to include oral health.
Blood pressure, diabetes, heart disease and more are linked to bacteria in the mouth getting in the patient’s blood, Whitney said.
“Once I looked into the mouth, I found a lot of problems that I might not have found a source for otherwise,” he said.
Germs in the mouth can enter the blood. This is especially true if people are seeing blood after brushing because it means there is an open path for bacteria to enter the blood stream. But even seemingly smaller oral issues can be cause for concern, for example a sore tooth could be hiding an infection.
Such infections can spread to the blood, which leads to inflammation, the movie said. That hidden inflammation is linked to heart disease, strokes, some types of cancer and diabetes, according to the movie.
One study suggested that up to 50 percent of all acute heart attacks are linked to oral bacteria getting in the blood. Heart attacks are the number one killer in America, and strokes are the top cause for disability.
One doctor used diabetes as another example. Inflammation from oral bacteria causes insulin resistance, much the same way having too much fat does, the movie says.
Whitney and others in the movie stress oral problems are not just related to diseases like diabetes, but research increasingly indicates oral bacteria may actually cause the other health concerns.
For example, one study on the brains of Alzheimer’s patients showed that 90 percent had a specific oral bacteria, compared to only 13 percent of patients without Alzheimer’s, Whitney said.
For heart disease, he said other things may contribute to problems in arteries such as cholesterol, and compared that to packing your body with gasoline. Peridontal disease is the match, Whitney said.
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