According to a recent study by researchers from University of Otago, New Zealand published in Community Dentistry and Oral Epidemiology, apparently anxiety results in people with anxious personalities having not only poor oral health, but decayed or missing teeth, also.

The study looking at anxiety levels for 1037-participants aged 15 to 32-years participating in the long-running Dunedin Multi-disciplinary Health and Development Study, found one quarter of them to be dentally anxious.

The group was split into three groups of those who had always been dentally anxious (stable anxious); or developed dental anxiety at the time of adolescence (adolescent-onset anxious), or as adults (adult-onset anxious).

The stable anxious group had early experience of dentists and had more tooth decay by age five; the adult-onset group seemed more likely to lose teeth between the ages of 26 and 32, while the adolescent-onset anxious group from the age 15 experienced more tooth decay.

Those experiencing dental anxiety were so frightened of the prospect of having to visit a dentist, they avoided the dentist altogether till the problem became so serious, it could not be avoided.

As a consequence, these dentally anxious people ended up with more tooth decay and more missing teeth than those who were not.

Which fact is reflected in tooth decay statistics that show non-anxious people having about 13-decayed, missing or filled tooth surfaces by the age of 32, whereas the stable anxious group were double that with 22-tooth decay affected surfaces aged 32.

The study’s biggest surprise was the recovery group that was dentally anxious at age 15, but by the age of 32-years they had ceased to be so.

The current study reinforces previous findings of the Dunedin Multi-disciplinary Study that shows poor oral health leads to compromised quality of life and other health-related problems.