How Sleep Affects Your Oral Health

Sleep plays an important role in your overall physical and mental health. Your body needs sleep to function and recharge. And oral health isn’t excluded from the things that benefit from quality sleep.

When you’re not catching enough Zs, your oral health can suffer. You may have higher inflammation, tooth decay and find yourself craving high-sugar foods.

Inflammation and Gum Disease

When you sleep, your blood pressure drops, and your blood vessels relax. This doesn’t happen as it should when you don’t get the sleep your body needs. This could trigger your body to create inflammatory molecules.

Creating inflammatory molecules is your body’s natural response to disease or injury, and in most circumstances is helpful. However, if poor sleep happens regularly, this process will happen every night – causing inflammation to never let up.

Studies have shown higher levels of inflammatory molecules in people who get inadequate sleep or have poor sleep quality. High levels of inflammation in the body can cause oral health conditions such as gum disease. This is from ongoing inflammation, irritation and swelling of the gum tissue.

Immunity and Dental Decay

With adequate sleep, your body can better fight off bacteria that might make you sick or cause infection. Your body can produce more proteins that signal your immune system to take action. Also, when your body has enough sleep, it creates more infection-fighting antibodies. This results in your body fighting off the bacteria before it affects your health.

Poor sleep is also linked to decreased levels of saliva production, resulting in dry mouth. This may be due in part to sleep conditions such as sleep apnea. Sleep apnea causes irregular breathing patterns that result in decreased saliva production. Saliva is important in washing away plaque and bacteria to prevent tooth decay.

Decreased saliva production, combined with lowered immunity, can put you at an increased risk of developing cavities.

The Codependency of Sleep, Nutrition and Oral Health

Perhaps the largest factor contributing to poor oral health from lack of sleep is changes in your diet and nutrition.

“Nutrition, sleep and oral health are codependent on each other,” shares Terry Norris, DMD, the lead consulting dentist for HRI Dental & Vision. “Lack of sleep triggers a nutritional response for energy that is normally satisfied by high-sugar foods and caffeine-laden drinks.”

While sugar and caffeine may provide a sudden burst of energy, it’s short-lived and can’t make up for the sleep your body needs. This causes you to enter a repetitive cycle of consuming high-sugar foods and high-sugar, caffeinated beverages.

“These sugar-laden foods are a feast for oral bacteria,” Dr. Norris shares. “This causes an increase in cavities and gum disease, which is exacerbated by a decrease in immunity cells caused by sleep deficiency.”

Getting the Sleep You Need

Prioritize sleep to improve your oral and overall health. Adults should aim to get seven to nine hours of sleep per night to give their body time to rest, restore and recharge. Get on a good sleep schedule, and practice good oral hygiene by brushing and flossing nightly before bed and when you wake up.

If you’re experiencing trouble with sleep, talk to your primary care provider about what treatment might be right for you. And keep a close watch on your oral health during times when sleep isn’t coming easily.

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Sources

https://www.health.harvard.edu/healthbeat/how-sleep-deprivation-can-cause-inflammation

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7980294/

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1087079224000431

https://sleepandcognition.org/the-connection-between-sleep-and-oral-health/