How To Prevent Mouth Cancer

Hi. I'm Brian Halverson and I'm a dentist. I've been in practice for over 35 years, and I've written a book about my principles on holistic dentistry.

The book is called Great Teeth for Life. This video is how to reduce the likelihood of you developing mouth cancer. Unfortunately, it is on the increase, for example, in England, one person is dying every five hours from mouth cancer.

This is the same in Europe generally, and in North America. The main causes are smoking and drinking. If you smoke, you have a very high likelihood of developing mouth cancer and, I'm sure you're aware, of other cancers in the body.

If you drink, and especially if you drink heavily as well as smoke, you actually increase the likelihood by possible up to a hundred times more than the average. Now, the first you hear about prevention, is either give up one or the other, or cut down as much as you can. If you actually have a healthy diet and a healthy lifestyle, this will help to mitigate the likelihood of developing mouth cancer.

At the same time, we would look to try to be as careful at detecting mouth cancer as possible. One of the other ways of preventing mouth cancer is by looking at a healthy lifestyle. Now, this isn't just about eating good, healthy, fresh fruits and vegetables, for example, it's actually looking at getting plenty of exercise.

It's actually having as much as you can a stress-free existence. If you were to look at things like taking supplements such as multi-minerals, simple ones such as vitamin C, all these things boost your immune system. The more you can boost your immune system, the more you can defend yourself from, not just mouth cancer, but all forms of cancer.

So, it's worth bearing in mind. Now, if you are a man over the age of 40, you are statistically twice as likely to develop mouth cancer as a lady. So, to finalize, if you can reduce smoking and drinking, you will considerably reduce the likelihood of developing mouth cancer.

The ultimate preventative is to try to see your dentist every six months. He can basically do a health check on you which will be to actually, one of the things he will do is to look for signs of mouth cancer in your mouth and early detection can make the difference between life and death. So, hopefully, that is a few tips on preventing mouth cancer. .