Looking for a Christmas subject, I came across this claim: 'Dirty teeth give you pneumonia.'
Not your idea of Christmas spirit? Bear with me. What happens most often at this time of year? Parties? Parties? More parties?
And in between the office end-of-year cocktails, Christmas dinners with business associates, get-togethers with old friends, Christmas lunches and Christmas drinks, what else do you do?
Run. Not in the healthy, pounding-the-pavement-sense. You run from meetings to forays into the food shopping jungle to even more frightening dashes into the Christmas gifts maze (or desert, when it comes to people for whom there's nothing suitable).
And in between partying and running, do you do much else? If you're lucky, you might be averaging four hours' sleep a night. Yes, that's what I'm getting at. Most of us are over-fed and over-lubricated (in the alcoholic sense, at least), but desperately short of sleep.
And while most of us recognise the obvious signs that the sleep meter is pointing to empty - irritability, poor memory, headaches, chronic exhaustion - few people spare a thought for their long-suffering teeth.
But if you're out all day and night, chances are you're not clearing the gunk off your teeth with a thorough floss and brush regularly. And if you're drinking a lot of alcohol, eating a tonne of sugar-laden Christmas goodies and keeping your eyes open with extra doses of coffee, you're loading your teeth with the kind of sugar that bacteria love. And you're keeping your mouth relatively dry, so saliva and other fluids don't clear the bacteria away.
