More Fallout from my Bike Wreck

There's a lot of talk now about how factors besides genes and current diet affect health and weight: the health of your mother when you were a fetus, your diet as a child, stress, and environment. Another is wear and tear.

A few years ago when I fell off my bike and broke a tooth and knocked two others out of place, my dentist said that the two knocked out of place would likely need a root canal someday because of the injury. It could be two weeks, it could be two years, he said. Now, nearly three years later, the canine that was injured is abscessed. 

Between being lethargic (doing nothing but watching Netflix when I got home), wearing my winter coat when everyone else was in shirtsleeves, and having an odd appetite (I've been living mostly on Quest bars this past month), I should have known I was sick. But I have a high threshold of pain. Finally, my face swelled up Friday morning and I made an appointment with my oral surgeon--the one who did my dental implant and gum graft. I didn't know what was wrong, but I saw him because the swelling was in the area of the implant and because I have a lot more confidence in dentists than in doctors. An x-ray showed bone loss around the root of the canine, meaning it's infected. 

Starting a course of antibiotics has perked me up so much that I've been moving large rose bushes today and feeling pretty good. Oddly, I'm in pain only at night, when my TMJ flares up. I'm wondering if TMJ is partly caused by swollen gums. It could be that low-carb diets help aches and pains in general because inflammation and water retention go down, meaning everything is less swollen and less sensitive. 

In any case, diet helps--the teeth where I had a slight cavity a few months ago are feeling better. But diet isn't everything.