Putting the Mouth into Health: The Importance of Oral Health for General Health

Abstract

Good oral health is important to overall health and wellbeing. From the most fundamental perspectives of the oral-systemic health relationship, good oral health ensures an individual can eat, speak and socialise without pain or embarrassment. These capabilities improve an individual's wellbeing and ability to contribute to society. There are more complex oral-systemic health relationships in which poor oral health can contribute to systemic diseases including the links between orofacial disease and, for example, diabetes, cardiovascular disease, pneumonia or rheumatoid arthritis. Furthermore, the oral environment is a complex biological ecosystem which provides an opportunity to understand mechanisms underlying pathological processes and which can be a model for other body systems. Examples of these oral-systemic interactions are presented to demonstrate the importance of the orofacial environment and the need for it to be incorporated into health more broadly. By putting the mouth into health through integrated education, research and clinical care across the health disciplines, there will be advances in health that will improve individual and community health. The orofacial region is unique because of its importance in social interactions, including communication and emotional expression, and in survival with mastica-tion and lifesaving refl exes that protect other external sensory (e.g. retina, olfactory epithelium, taste receptors) and internal homeostatic (e.g. respiratory and digestive tracts) systems from damaging environmental changes. Consequently this region and good oral health are important components to overall health and wellbeing.