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Many doctors recommend that you do this to treat your gum disease.<\/p>\nMany doctors recommend that you do this to treat your gum disease.<\/p>\n
But according to a new study in the journal mBio<\/em>, this supposedly healthy habit drastically worsens gum disease. <\/p>\n Cigarette smoking is one of the best-known risk factors for gum disease. So doctors often recommend that their patients switch to vaping e-cigarettes instead.<\/p>\n But vaping has not been studied as thoroughly. The long-term consequences of vaping are especially poorly understood.<\/p>\n To close this research gap, scientists from New York University’s College of Dentistry carried out a series of studies that compared vapers, cigarette smokers, and non-smokers with each other.<\/p>\n They recruited 84 subjects, of whom 27 smoked normal cigarettes, 28 used e-cigarettes, and 29 did not smoke. Since approximately half of all Americans over the age of 30 have gum disease, many of these subjects displayed some level of it.<\/p>\n They examined their subjects’ oral health over a period of six months, during which their smoking habits remained the same. They examined the participants\u2019 teeth to assess their gum disease severity level; they also analyzed bacterial plaques and gum tissue samples that they had collected.<\/p>\n This is what they found:<\/p>\n 2.\tAfter six months, e-cigarette smokers experienced more separation between gums and teeth than participants in the other two groups did.<\/p>\n 3.\tThe bacterial profiles in the mouths of e-cigarettes users showed similarities with those of both cigarette smokers and non-smokers, but they were more similar to those of cigarette smokers. In particular, they shared bacteria like Selenomonas, Leptotrichia, and Saccharibacteria with smokers.<\/p>\n 4.\tSome bacteria previously associated with gum disease, such as Fusobacterium and Bacteroidales, were especially common in the mouths of vapers. <\/p>\n 5.\tTNF-alpha, a cytokine used by the immune system that causes inflammation, was much more abundant in vapers than in the other two groups.<\/p>\n 6.\tIL-4, another immune system cytokine, was lower in vapers. IL-4 is normally low in people with gum disease and it increases after treatment, suggesting that the bacteria in the mouths of vapers might actively suppress immune defenses against infection.\n<\/dd>\n<\/dl>\n Therefore, while vaping may or may not be better for your oral health than normal smoking, it still poses a major gum disease risk that might be even worse than cigarette smoking. <\/p>\n The researchers attributed their findings to the nicotine and other chemicals vaporized by e-cigarettes.<\/p>\n\n