How Your Food is Shaping Your Face

Last week I had the pleasure of interviewing dentist Dr. Steven Lin, and we discussed how periodontal disease in the mouth could very possibly be triggering diseases such as obesity and diabetes, through inflammatory pathway activation. Which is a complicated way of saying: when our body has an underlying, persistent but low grade threat remaining within the body, such as the bad bacteria invasion in gum disease, or untreated cavities, the immune system releases a constant flow of low level chemicals and hormones, to try to defeat the hazard. This is part of the inflammatory response. But in these cases they are not amounting a strong enough attack to completely kill each other off, so the inflammatory chemicals remain and slowly hurt, degrade and deform the body, causing disease.   We are left with a big question this week; Could everything, from weight gain, diabetes, cancers, dental health and even our bone structure be linked to the foods we eat and how our body is absorbing the nutrients? It is certainly a questions weighing on many minds, including Dr. Lin, who says: “I think one of the biggest problems facing modern healthcare is the fact that dentists and doctors are not working more closely with nutrition, as this is commonly where all the problems first originate.”   And it’s not just what we eat, but the quality, where did the food come from? Is it organic, local and still full of nutrients, or has it been processed, heat treated, in long-term cold storage or genetically modified?   For example, facial bone structure, how straight or crooked teeth are, impacted wisdom teeth and airways can all be greatly manipulated by available nutrients present in the diet from birth. “Why are there so many cases of impacted wisdom teeth these days, when we rarely saw it 30 or more years ago? Why are our own teeth suddenly not fitting into our mouths? Asks Dr. Lin.   The greatest theory to explain this strange occurrence is the food quality we are eating simply doesn’t contain the minerals needed to support the full growth length of bones like the jaw, creating common situations now like impacted wisdom teeth, crooked teeth, sleep apnea in children which then effects their behavior, and much more, and it all comes down to diet.   Food for thought.   Find Dr. Lin on Facebook and Twitter