In this study, more than 1,000 participants between the ages of 15 and 32 were studied. The researcher discovered around a quarter of them had dental anxiety condition.

The participants were divided into groups:
people who had experienced dental anxiety throughout their lives (stable anxious)
people who became dentally anxious as a teen (adolescent-onset anxious)
people who became dentally anxious as an adult (adult- onset anxious).

The stable anxious group had all experienced tooth decay around 5 years old, the adult-onsets had lost teeth around the age of 26 to 32, and teen-onsets had their issues at around 15 years old.

Professor Murray Thomson, research leader, examined the characters of the dentally anxious participants and he found that they usually had a 'glass-half-empty' approach to life and usually were anxious about several things – heights, spiders etc.

Usually people become increasingly anxious through constantly steering clear of the dentist until their dental situation became much worse, he said.

The professor made the point that by this time the anxious patients would need the more unpleasant treatments that then reinforced their anxiety and would push them to further limits to avoid the dentist when new problems arose.

It was found that the stable anxious group would have around 22 missing, decayed or filled teeth by 32-years-old, when non-anxious people would have around 13.

The study also discovered that some people became dentally anxious as a teen but as they got older, they became less anxious.

Peoples with dental anxiety are so afraid of dental visit. They would evade treatment at all costs until the situation became really serious.

Professor Thomson claimed that the research has implications both for public and dental professionals. It could give dentists an idea of the causes of dental anxiety.

He also said that it was important that the people understood the more they avoided the dentist, the more they would become scared and that more damage would be done to their teeth.


Source: Bad oral health is stress related, say experts

The research was lead by Dr. Krishnan Bhaskaran of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine in the UK. He and his team note in their report that several studies have linked changes in temperature to increases in deaths due to any cause, as well as heart disease mortality.

The researchers reviewed 26 studies on air pollution and heart attack and 19 examining on temperature and heart attack, in two separate reports.

Eight studies showed short-term increases in heart attack risk with colder temperatures, in the 12 temperature studies that collected winter data. And they found increased heart attack risk in hotter weather in seven of the 13 studies that looked at the effects of warmer temperatures.

On average, cold temperatures seemed to have a greater effect on heart attack risk in areas that were warmer, Bhaskaran and colleagues note, suggesting that people living in colder areas may be better adapted to dips in temperature. But hot days boosted heart attack risk whether they happened in Sweden or Brazil.

The findings show there might be an extra one to four heart attacks on the hottest or coldest days in a city that normally sees 10 heart attacks a day, Bhaskaran explained.

"There was a lot of variation in the methods and quality of the studies we reviewed, so more work is needed in this area, but we thought the results were consistent enough to suggest that these effects are real," he added.

The researcher said that the evidence from the pollution studies was less clear-cut, but overall suggested that the risk of heart attack increases with levels of several different pollutants. He also noted that there appeared to be no "safe" level of air pollution at which no effect on heart attack risk was seen.

"Our findings would suggest that further lowering limits would likely further reduce the health burden associated with pollution, which is of course a desirable outcome," he said.

There also a note from Professor David E. Newby of the University of Edinburgh and colleagues accompanying this study. They said that efforts to control air pollution are likely to help reduce carbon dioxide emissions as well. This effort possibly helping to reduce the effects of climate change down the road.


Source: Dirty air, heat, cold may all trigger heart attacks