nearly every sickness is from the teeth

So says Sergeant Pluck from Flann O’Brien’s The Third Policeman.

There’s nothing worse than having to tell a person that they have seriously bad halitosis. It could even be worse than telling them that you’ve accidentally run over their dog or your cat has eaten their budgie. But the reality is that you’re not only doing them a favour in the social sense, you could also be saving their life. Not to be melodramatic or anything. Anyway, I was reading in an article recently that oral hygiene is possibly more important than we would like to believe. Peridontal disease may exacerbate diabetes, heart disease, respiratory disease – even premature births, experts say. So the fictional policeman may have been speaking more than a modicum of sense.

Working in an industry that requires a certain amount of face time in meatspace, one has got to be careful, but for our less fastidious brothers and sisters: beware! Oral bacteria may find their way into your bloodstream and cause inflammation of other body tissues as well as eliciting olfactory distaste and unpleasantness from you peers.

Brush twice a day and floss at night. And do it well.