Medicine is the umbrella name of scientific disciplines consisting of many sub-disciplines, dealing with the maintenance of physical health and integrity or the restoration of deteriorated health. Holistic medicine, on the other hand, works on “how we maintain health”, not “how we treat the disease”.
Plato said, “Without the whole good, it is impossible to heal the part.” This also applies to health. The body works as a whole. Dentistry is also an important part of this whole. The occurrence of a symptom is our body’s way of showing us that something is out of balance and needs to be treated.
The oral cavity is one of the first indications that something is wrong with the body. As Hippocrates said, “The mouth is the mirror of health.”
In our daily lives, most of us do not realize the function of our mouth and teeth, or even their existence. But it comes to mind when something goes wrong or when we have pain. The mouth’s most well-known role is that it is the entrance to the digestive tract and is designed to initiate the digestive process. teeth; biting, tearing, grinding the food, ensuring that the sounds are correct when speaking, tongue; to turn and taste food in the mouth, and saliva to aid swallowing and start the digestion of food.
So, is the effectiveness of teeth in the body really that much? Is there any problem when there is no pain in the teeth? When a tooth hurts, when that tooth is treated or extracted, that is, when the patient’s pain ceases, do all the problems end? In this book, I would like to question the relationship between the diseases and symptoms seen in dentistry and chronic diseases and to draw attention to the importance of dental problems.
In old movies, slave traders looked at the mouths and teeth of slaves after their appearance. Today, when buying and selling horses or other animals, the first thing to look at is their mouths to understand their health.
I would like to draw your attention to the fact that I am not saying only teeth here. If you have a healthy mouth, you have a healthy body. The mouth is a reflection of the body. The health of the teeth, the length and color of the tongue, the inside of the lips and cheeks, the gums, the smell of the breath, the consistency of the saliva are always the first indicators of body health.
Every symptom in the body is a warning that something is wrong with the body. For example, imagine that the fuel gauge light is on while you are driving, this is a warning to you. You can respond to this warning and go and get gas, or you can ignore the indicator and stay on the road. Ignoring the signals your body is giving you can have far more serious consequences.
Since the mouth is a reflection of the body, negative signals in the body first give symptoms here. For this reason, it is important for the early diagnosis of diseases not to miss the signals given by the mouth, which is so prominent. Although it is an easy-to-see area, unfortunately, medical doctors do not consider this area separately from the body. However, about 30% of chronic diseases are caused by problems in the mouth and teeth. Many patients visit different doctors, but never recover. In these patients, dramatic improvements can occur after correct dental treatments. For example, a urinary tract infection that has been going on for many years can be healed by the extraction of a cystic tooth, or the problem of urticaria after replacing a coating or filling in the mouth.
As a result of the cooperation of dentists and medical doctors, it is possible to diagnose many diseases early and even prevent them before they occur, or to improve many symptoms in the body only with dental treatment applied by a dentist who works with a holistic perspective. When we look at the studies conducted on people who have applied to a doctor for treatment, we can see that both the diseases in the body are reflected in the mouth and the diseases in the mouth are reflected in the body. If we also count those who have not yet consulted a doctor and those who are at the initial stage and have not been diagnosed, we can better understand how large this rate is.
