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Most people don’t realize it – but exercise can actually play a big part in your oral health. Because exercising is important in improving your overall health and wellbeing, it also provides benefits to your oral health in more ways than one.
On the whole, various studies have established that people who exercise are much less likely to contract gum disease. Even exercising just a little bit can help to dramatically reduce the risk of gum disease - due to the fact that your body will be in better shape overall.
Not only can exercising directly help to improve your oral health, but it does so indirectly as well by maintaining a healthy Body Mass Index (BMI). People who are overweight or obese with a higher BMI are at greater risk of issues such as diabetes or hypertension – both of which can affect your oral health.
Although exercise is beneficial overall – there are several risk factors that you need to be aware of that could affect your oral health negatively. Some of these risks include:
While sports drinks that are high on electrolytes can help you to keep your energy levels up while exercising – these drinks tend to be high in acid and sugar too. As such they’re actually pretty bad for your oral health – especially if you get into the habit of drinking them often. As an alternative, you could stick to regular water or coconut water.
When you exercise and sweat you are losing a lot of water. While that temporary loss of water isn’t going to have a huge impact on your oral health, it is important that you hydrate sufficiently so that it doesn’t get to the point where it can affect the acid balance in your mouth and cause erosion.
Now that you’re aware of these risk factors you should be able to eliminate them. If you feel that you’re having trouble with any of these issues, you can always visit a dentist and ask them what else you can do. Try to get into the habit of exercising regularly and you’ll soon start to feel the benefits to your oral health as well as the rest of your body.
It should be noted that while exercise is important to promote better oral health – it is still crucial that you stick to a healthy dental regimen that includes brushing and flossing twice a day or after every meal, and attending a regular dental checkup at least once every six months. That being said, if you’re exercising in addition to sticking to your healthy dental regimen – you should be able to reduce your risk of oral health issues considerably.
Online since 2000