Oh really? Stressed parents have kids with cavities

You know how I love the way scientists like to tell us the blindingly obvious and then couch it in terms of a great discovery? Well, here’s one I found earlier on one of my health forums. A team of scientists from The Ohio State University looked at the stress levels of parents whose young children either had no cavities or so many cavities that the children had to be anaesthetized before they could be treated.

I know you will find this hard to believe, but apparently the researchers found a correlation between the parents’ status, education levels, income, and their stress levels. So those who were single parents on a low income were more stressed than two parent families with a good income and that the higher the parents’ stress level was, then the greater number of cavities the children had. Could that be down to poor diet because of a low income I wonder? Their final conclusion – which is a real breakthrough – is that when the parents could afford to get their childs teeth seen to by a dentist their own stress levels went down. Their ‘suggestion’ is that dentists need to find ways to help low income families afford their services so they can reduce their stress levels – oh really?