Oral Health or Dental Health Does Your Dental Insurance Plan Cover Everything?
Whether your dental plan covers everything that can happen in your mouth depends on what you selected in your dental insurance policy. Is your tongue covered? Or how about your gums? What about your jaws? It can get complicated.
Your oral health is more important than most people know. While it includes dental health, it includes more than that. Also it can affect your overall health. So you really need to take good care of your teeth and everything in your mouth. Poets say your eyes are the windows to your soul. In response ,some dentists claim your oral health is a window to your general well-being.
The Academy of General Dentistry claims that the overwhelming majority of all diseases (90%) have some symptoms in your oral health. In fact, the National Institute of Health says that if people have dental insurance they are more likely to take better care of their teeth and maintain regular preventive dental checkups. Of course, it helps if they brush and floss . This is true whether they have a discount dental plan or a full coverage dental insurance plan. It seems the common element is paying attention to oral hygiene.
So what else does oral health include? Oral health includes everything that is in your mouth: your jaws, your gums, your lips, even your tongue and chewing muscles. It also includes the oral structures and everything in your mouth that gives you the ability to smile, smell, taste, swallow,touch and chew and even talk. Oral health includes any oral or facial pain, soft tissue sores, birth defects, like cleft lip, and even cancer. It is a lot more than simply keeping your teeth clean.
Care for Your Oral Health
In the last fifty years scientists have learned a lot about tooth decay, gum disease and oral health. This is good news and has demonstrated significant improvement among many people, particularly those who have dental insurance coverage. The down side of this story is that there are still so many people who do not make the connection and apply good oral hygiene.
Think about it. Your mouth is home to many bacteria. It takes a good immune system and daily brushing and flossing to manage them. When bacteria grows out of control and creates tooth decay or gum disease or infections, other parts of your body can be affected. For example, if your immune system is compromised it is possible for bacteria to get into your bloodstream and carry infection all throughout your body. Even diabetes is connected. Things like pre-mature births and low birth weight babies are sometimes a result of gum disease. Heart and lung diseases, strokes and brain damage have all been connected to the status of your oral health.
Many oral conditions cause gum and bone infections and cause teeth to become loose. Osteoporosis weakens bones and this contributes to gum disease and tooth or bone loss. Patients with HIV/AIDS may have painful sores in their mouths. Alzheimer’s disease may show itself with early tooth loss before 35 years old. Various eating disorders and immune system disorders are also connected to your oral health. It is unclear how much of this is included even in a full coverage dental insurance plan. So it is worth talking it over with the dentist.
These various health conditions can be connected to your oral health, so it is especially important to take good care of your teeth and gums, even as a child. Researchers tell us that about 44 million Americans do not have any health insurance and approximately 108 million do not have any dental insurance. Children who are raised in families without dental plans are 3 times as likely to need dental treatment than other children who have dental insurance.
In addition, socio-economic factors influence who is likely to be insured. Sometimes people cannot afford to take time off from work to obtain dental treatments. Or the co-pay that they must pay out of their own pocket is more than they can afford even if they have dental insurance.
The facts show the following groups of people are either under-insured or have no dental insurance and consequently have worse oral health than their peers:
- elderly,
- disabled,
- minority ethnic groups,
- children
- low- income or unemployed people.
These are the people who are most often unable to afford dental insurance or who have limited access to transportation to a dentist who will serve them. And this makes oral health and dental health a public health issue of importance to all of us.
Remember the small amount of money that you put into your dental insurance plan can be a significant safeguard for your overall health.
