A recent article from ScienceDaily jumped out at me as I was scrolling and looking for my next blog post topic. The article titled “Evidence grows for vaping’s role in gum disease” caught my attention due to how much I can relate to this topic. This connects to me because vaping and e-cigarettes are highly intertwined with the college culture. Students are constantly spending loads of money on Juul pods, vape juice, and other vapes chasing their next head buzz. At parties, the Juul is being passed around from begging one person to another begging person for that one hit. Now there are studies by New York University that theorize these e-cigarettes and vapes could lead to gum disease.

What is Gum Disease?

Gum disease is when the gums start to recede lower and lower toward the bone. This can lead to inflammation of the gums, bleeding or the gums, and tooth loss among other things.

Patient with gum disease via https://www.sweettoothdent.com/services/periodontal-disease/types-of-periodontal-disease/

Study

Of course, we know that cigarettes ruin our gums, so it would only make sense that a vape would also have a negative effect on one’s gum health. The study was conducted by two professors at the NYU dental school and ran for a year. There were 84 test subjects divided into three groups; cigarette smokers, e-cigarette smokers, and non-smokers. The patients would go in to be observed every 6 months. It was found that e-cigarette smokers had much worse gum health than smokers and non-smokers. The results were found in the plaque taken from the dental exam. The “oral biome” of the mouth was much different from the non-smokers and cigarette smokers. There were bacterium related to gum disease that were found in the biome of the e-cigarette smoker. For anyone who chews tobacco, or smokes both cigarettes and e-cigarettes, stop while you still can. There are levels of gum disease, with the photo showing the worst of it. This disease is painful and also expensive if you need teeth removed or dentures created to fill the place of the old tooth.

Here is a link talking more about gum disease if you’re interested

https://www.sweettoothdent.com/services/periodontal-disease/types-of-periodontal-disease/