More than just cosmetic: the link between lack of dentures and dementia

When I first started working in the field of long-term care, I was hired as an ombudsman in Charleston, WV, not because of any special expertise in the field of long-term care, but because of my mother. I experienced such frustrations and helplessness in the institutional, task-oriented environment of the first nursing home she was in. Luckily, I found a much better nursing home, a not-for-profit home sponsored by the Episcopal Church. My brother and sisters were happy with the change too. My mother lived there for a year before her death, three years before I became an ombudsman. I hadn't needed to bring issues to the attention of the administrator of the director of nurses at Bishop Davies, but I did wonder where one went when there were problems, and solutions were not to be found within the nursing home itself. As a previous community organizer, I thought there must be something that could be done with and for families when they were companioning one of their own in a nursing home. And so I landed in Charleston, West Virginia!

My first task was to become familiar with the federal and state regulations so that I could advocate for nursing home residents, or for their family members should they ask me to look into a particular concern. One of the regulations that always remained sort of in the forefront of them all was the responsibility of the nursing home to replace – at their expense -- a resident's dentures should they become lost. I learned that staff should be trained to shake out dinner napkins before throwing them into the laundry receptacle, as well as to check a resident's dinner tray before discarding everything, unexamined, as trash.

Not having one's dentures does change one's appearance, and it is a matter of the acknowledgement of the resident's dignity – also covered in the regs – to see that the resident is wearing his or her dentures (unless he or she chooses not to). I've always wondered how someone really eats well without dentures. This morning my wondering was grounded in a report that shows a strong link between a lack of dentures (or lack of chewing) and a higher risk for dementia. Several studies demonstrate "an association between not having teeth and loss of cognitive function and a higher risk of dementia."

The report of this research goes onto say that one reason for this correlation between lack of chewing and risk for dementia may be that when chewing is difficult because of lack of teeth or dentures, there is less blood flow to the brain.

Source for this information: Medical News Today. http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/releases/251176.php