Oral health and athletics, new research!

Does oral care really matter in elite athletes? Some say, heck yes! Check out these links to find out how important oral health is to athletes performance.

British Journal Sports Medicine

BBC news online

Quote from the BBC article 

However, Prof Ian Needleman, director of the International Centre for Evidence-Based Oral Health at University College London, says there could be an impact in elite sport.

He told the BBC: "It's the accumulation of marginal gains, where the difference between elite athletes at the very top is small. Then oral health, amongst other aspects, could make a difference.

"The research we did at London 2012 found a large proportion of young athletes, fantastically well tuned physically, had really poor oral health.

"Quite a high proportion reported an impact on their training and performance so it's clearly an issue for them."

Dental conditions among competitive university athletes in Nigeria.

The oral health status of special olympics athletes in Belgium.