A record share of all deaths around the world are attributed to Alzheimer’s, varieties of cancer and diabetes. Anecdotal research suggests the number has reached a striking 90% e.g. in the United Kingdom. For decades, the best in class medical professionals summed up these diseases are triggered by bad personal habits by patients such as lack of exercise, drinking alcohol and smoking to name a few.
The root cause of the world’s major diseases has yet to be discovered. Today, medicines developed to combat Alzheimers are not working. Elevated cholesterol levels have been the idealized culprate for heart attacks, however, astonishingly most patients suffering heart attacks do not have high cholesterol.
New studies point to bacteria causing gum disease as humanity’s most pervasive player triggering the largest range of problematic health conditions. In fact, gum disease is an epidemic in its own right, in the United States affecting 42% of people aged 30+ spiking to 60% for those aged 65+.
As the mortality rate from diseases continues to rise with an aging global population, spanning decades trillions of dollars have been invested in separate siloed disease research communities to help pin down solutions. Meanwhile, simply linking bacteria’s role as the root cause of diseases has eluded the complex wisdom of the international medical community for centuries.
Bacteria: Healthcare’s Evolution of Understanding
The general awareness of bacteria’s role in triggering disease is now starting to be logically considered across the global medical community. New research shows a near conclusively direct relationship between bacteria causing gum disease as the trigger to other major health issues throughout the body. For example, patients with gum disease are at greater risk for developing Parkinson’s – with an increase in severity of symptoms.
- The role of bacteria as a cause of disease has long been overlooked given microbes gestate slowly with periods of dormancy.
- Bacteria thrive over time by depreciating immune system activity and over lifespan force the human body to age and/or cause disease(s).
- Evidence is mounting in medical research laboratories around the world that treating bacteria may be the most advanced methodology to combating the world’s disease epidemic.
The mouth hosts over 1,000 types of bacteria, some of which are harmful to the body causing gum disease. Bacteria living on teeth create plaques that can build up, harden and spread below the gums causing inflammation. Some bacteria take advantage of the opportunity to multiply creating communities that disrupt oxygen flow to gums and teeth, increasing the levels of inflammation in the process. This cycle soon allows microbes to enter the bloodstream with the intent of manipulating the host’s immune system, allowing the bacteria to spread throughout the body. Recent studies have found gum disease causing bacteria directly affecting and inflaming tissues of the heart, brain, kidneys, spleen and brain.
Bacteria’s rather clever and systematic process of spreading throughout the body is an active hypothesis explaining the root cause of Alzheimer’s, stroke and diabetes. As with other conditions, research shows that patients with diabetes are not just seeing bateria’s effects adding to the body’s inflammatory load, but potentially are also actively cutting insulin productivity in the pancreas and liver.
Today no official medical body issuing advice for warding off the world’s major killers include dental care and gum disease as a major health risk factor. “There is insufficient evidence to suggest that treating gum disease [bacteria] reduces risk…” says Benoit Varenne, a leading Dental Officer at the World Health Organization (WHO).
With historical irony, the general consensus of the global medical community on bacteria has been notably precarious:
- From 1958, WHO and other global medical leaders attributed stress and stomach acid as the root cause of stomach ulcers.
- Until a 1982 discovery changed global consensus, that commonly recognized that bacteria were the dominant cause of stomach ulcers.
The 1982 revelation on the root cause of stomach ulcers advanced common care and treatment of the disease from the incorrect 1958 protocol associated with diagnosis.
Modern Healthcare Requires Global Paradigm Shift, Thoughtful Action on Bacteria
Astonishingly, in the United States public and private insurance funds that offer dental care (including programs to treat gum disease) pay up to 67% less for claims associated with diabetes, stroke, cancer and heart attacks. This adds to the mountain of compelling evidence, supporting innovation of thought related to bacteria is necessary in the healthcare community worldwide.
- “It’s perhaps too easy to mock the notion that flossing your teeth may contribute to good brain health,” says Margaret Gatz at the University of Southern California.
- “There is a history of dental and medical doctors working apart and not cooperating,” comments Thomas Kocher at the University of Greifswald, Germany.
From the dawn of modern medicine to current time, global health professionals’ preamble of care has centered on belief that poor lifestyle and/or heredity is the root cause of all diseases. While lifestyle may be a factor, the international healthcare community (including WHO) should waste no time actioning an innovative approach to bacteria in the face of increasing mortality rate of non-communicable diseases given recent advancements in bacteria studies.
Medical scholars shy away from making radical paradigm shifts yielding to decades of obsolete treatment technology. Devoting entire careers pursuing specialized explanations to the cause and treatment of diseases, many medical professionals around the globe are antipathetic to theses of the magnitude that bacteria could be triggering Alzheimer’s, stroke and many more diseases that plague humanity.
Forward, it is a near non-negotiable necessity for any serious medical professional to join the effort in thoughtful discourse on a possible causal role of bacteria to disease and explore the potentially simple methods bacteria may be harnessed in helping solve the world’s very serious non communicable disease epidemics.