Link discovered between tooth loss and slowing mind and body
The memory and walking speeds of adults who have lost all of their teeth decline more rapidly than in those who still have some of their own teeth, finds new UCL research.
The study, published in the Journal of the American Geriatrics Society, looked at 3,166 adults aged 60 or over from the English Longitudinal Study of Ageing (ELSA) and compared their performance in tests of memory and walking speed. The results showed that the people with none of their own teeth performed approximately 10% worse in both memory and walking speed tests than the people with teeth.