Stress can play havoc with your patient's mouth

I was talking with a colleague about the havoc emotional stress can cause in a patient's mouth. Yet not many dentists, or physicians, take stress into consideration when examining a patient.

Alvin Danenberg, DDS.

As this 2014 article from Contemporary Clinical Dentistry (July-September 2014, Vol. 5:3, pp. 352-356) notes, there is a definitive relationship between a stressful life event and oral health issues. Basically, stress affects the gut and the immune system. From there, it manifests in many areas of the body -- possibly including the mouth.

Let me tell you about a patient.

This image is the mouth of a woman who came to see my associate, J. Daulton Keith, DDS, with the complaint of sore, bleeding gums. There were no obvious causes for this problem; she had very little dental plaque around her gum tissues. My associate referred her to her medical doctor to check for possible systemic diseases that could be sources of her mouth problem. In the images included here, the photography was done with the lips pulled back to show the teeth and gums for better viewing.

Sore, bleeding gums in a female adult patient. All images courtesy of Dr. Alvin Danenberg.

Her physician determined that there were no medical conditions that caused her sore, bleeding gums. After she returned to our office, she broke down emotionally and described her emotional and sexual abuse by her employer. My associate convinced her to make a life change.

She was fortunate and able to secure excellent employment with a different company in another state, quit her current job with her abusive employer, and relocate within a short period of time.

Four months later, she returned to our office. From the time she originally was seen in our office to the time she returned after her move, she did not receive any medical or dental treatment for her mouth lesions. Her only treatment was the removal of her emotional stress.

The picture of her mouth after she returned to our office is below. All the gum lesions were gone -- no soreness, no bleeding, and no lesions. Her original mouth condition was caused by severe emotional stress; her cure was the direct result of totally eliminating this stress from her life.

The patient's mouth four months later.

Unfortunately, most people who experience emotional stress from whatever sources are unable to reduce that stress completely. But, this patient I described is a real-life example of a person who suffered the oral manifestation of severe psychological stress and who healed completely after totally removing that stress from her life.

Alvin Danenberg, DDS, practices at the Bluffton Center for Dentistry in Bluffton, SC. He is also on the faculty of the College of Integrative Medicine and created its integrative periodontal teaching module. He also spent two years as chief of periodontics at Charleston Air Force Base earlier in his career. His website is drdanenberg.com.

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