Two posts for the price of one-

1) Teeth and gums can kill you. A full blown infection such as Ron and Paula experienced dumps a huge toxin load into your system with the results noted. But there are two more sneaky variants as well. An infection can hide at the root of a tooth and if it finds an outlet so that pressure doesn't build up and cause you pain, it can smoulder there for years dumping toxins in the whole time. The other is periodontal disease when a different bacteria colonizes the space around the roots of the teeth and begins to dissolve the bone and tissues around the tooth. This leads to inflammation and bleeding gums and more toxins. It also acts as a reservoir for bacteria that can end up affecting your heart.

2) While all this thought about what leads to PD is important, it is even more so for us to think about what PD is. All living systems survive by maintaining balance. Things swing back and forth but the forces work to bring things back to a center that is appropriate for the environment the creature finds itself in. All to maximize the odds of survival. This happens in the womb when unusual levels of stress hormones arise. The assumption is that the world outside is a dangerous place and that the fetus will have a better chance if its triggers are set such that the child will be more "alert". That translates into a greater stress response in the adult. Anything which disrupts our balanced systems can have major impact, whether an infection or a confrontation with our boss or just hurrying to get to work. In a normal person there is a control system (the HPA axis) that automatically nudges everything back into place but in PWP the controls have lost their calibration.