Healthy teeth, tooth loss, cavities and damaged teeth can give doctors and scientists information about other parts
of our body.
That’s what recent research out of Arizona State University confirmed in a study focusing on the Tsimane people,
wherein evolutionary anthropologists and bioarchaeologists discovered that poor oral health is associated with
higher levels of inflammation, smaller brain volumes (dementia) and aortic valve calcification (cardiovascular
disease).
But how does poor oral health affect our hearts and brains exactly?
Evolutionary anthropologist Ben Trumble and colleagues
believe it could happen several ways. For one, there could be bacteria entering the bloodstream causing the
inflammation, which can lead to trouble chewing and poor nutrition.
Trumble, an associate professor in Arizona State University’s School of Human Evolution and Social Change, the Institute of Human Origins, and the Center for Evolution and Medicine, explained why the study focused on the Tsimane, an Indigenous population in the Bolivian Amazon.
“In the United States, people living in low socioeconomic status conditions often are at higher risk for both chronic diseases of aging and of not having access to dental insurance or good dental care,” Trumble said.
“People living in low socioeconomic conditions often don’t have access to inexpensive healthy food, safe places to
exercise or have time to cook at home and workout. These structural barriers make it more likely for individuals to
have both high rates of chronic diseases like cardiovascular disease compared to the rest of the population, but
also 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
have far less of a socioeconomic gradient and very little access to modern dentistry. This makes it possible to
examine associations between oral health and chronic disease without confounding social factors.”
Trumble and his colleagues at the Tsimane
Health and Life History Project have worked with the Tsimane for over 20 years. The relationship is not
helicopter research. The project has brought access to health care to this subsistence population and led to
numerous discoveries about heart health, dementia, brain volume and now oral health.
Trumble explained the research on oral health actually came from a request by the Tsimane to get access to dental
care.
“In order to apply for future grants, and to ask the various Bolivian health agencies for help, we had to first
collect preliminary data to show that there is a major unmet need for dental care in this population, and that it
has important impacts for health,” Trumble said.
“Because of this study, we have increased awareness of the associations between oral health and chronic disease in
the U.S., and we also have started working with local Bolivian dentists to provide dental care to the Tsimane in the
coming months.
Trumble worked with two world-class dental researchers on this project: Gary Schwartz, professor and evolutionary anthropologist, and
Christopher Stojanowski, professor and bioarchaeologist — both
at the School of Human Evolution and Social Change.
Schwartz has spent his career on something most of us only think about twice a day, when we brush.
