Oral Health Challenges in Senior Adults

On 27 September, Health Live@Seniors Today hosted senior dental surgeon Dr Asha Narde. She spoke on and answered questions about multidimensional look at oral health challenges in seniors. 

Dr Asha Narde, a senior Conservative Dentist and Endodontist, has been in clinical practice at Juhu, Mumbai since 1995. She graduated from the Nair Hospital Dental College in 1990 and later did her postgraduation from the KLES Dental College, Belgaum, in 1994.  Dr Narde is a Consulting Endodontist at The Dental Clinic , Breach Candy Hospital and for over two decades.

A great majority of her patients are 60 years and above, and providing optimum dental care has been her mission. She is part of the fraternity that trains young dentists in the field of geriatric dentistry to understand and provide the needs of the ageing population in an objective manner. She is also Honorary Joint Secretary of the Association of Geriatric Dentistry.

This session is an initiative by The Dental Clinic, Breach Candy Hospital Trust and the Association of Geriatric Dentistry(AGeD) to celebrate the International Day of Older People(October 1, 2025).

• Productive ageing is where the elderly try to learn and engage in new activities such as exercising, weight training, picking up a hobby et cetera not only helps them age gracefully but also helps build good social circles and helps in improving the community around them. 
• As you age, you need to remember that you’re aging with experience and wisdom and no technology can take that away from you. 
• To continue to live healthy and productive lives you need to continue to take care of yourself.
• This begins with taking good care of your oral and dental hygiene. 
• Your mouth is the beginning of the digestive tract, you need healthy teeth to chew- and that is what brings in better nutrition and health. 
• You cannot run from age related chronic diseases but at every step meeting your physician, expressing your concerns and issues, working around your issues apart from taking your medications regularly helps you live a healthy life and age independently. 

• Dr Asha says that every elderly citizen should age with dignity, age with a purpose. I know that you are a treasure of skills experience and wisdom, thus be full of vitality.
• As we age our oral cavity also silently goes through a decline which can in turn impact an individuals’ nutrition which can further affect your general health and condition and in some cases also affect your quality of life. This is called oral hypo function.
• Oral hypo function means that the functioning of your mouth and oral cavity has declined without your realisation. 
• With ageing, there is a decline in the muscle strength resulting in weakness of the muscles around the jaw, weakness of muscles that aid chewing, weakness of muscles that coordinate and aid the movement of jaw. 
• Your lips and tongue also start slowly losing their strength.
• Also with aging, your salivary glands become weak and start producing less saliva. 
• Dry mouth is also very commonly seen in patients who are on multiple medications. This means that the natural lubrication and the self cleansing action of the mouth is lost.
• Thus, because of the weakness of the muscles and the reduction in salvation there is increased susceptibility to contact with oral diseases. 
• These seniors are also prone to cavities gum infection and if left unattended can also ultimately lead to loss of teeth.
• Chronic diseases also tend to affect the oral health and the gums health.

There are seven signs and symptoms to help you identify oral hypo- function. And if your dentist identifies any three or more, you are said to have  oral hypo function. These are:

1. Lack of oral hygiene: when there are food particles in your oral cavity, you have multiple cavities and gum issues. Your teeth or dentures are not maintained properly. This can also include bleeding gums.
2. Presence of oral dryness. 
3. Reduced biting strength. At least 20 teeth should be remaining even by the age 80.
4. Reduced tongue and lip motor function. 
5. Reduced tongue pressure. 
6. Reduced chewing function. 
7. Reduced swallowing function. You tend to choke or gag or cough.