Lifestyle and Oral Health - A Review

Lifestyle is associated closely with particular ways of living, promoted through advertising and branding forms. It is a diffuse concept that is often used to denote the way people live, reflecting a whole range of social values, attitude and activities, and it is composed of cultural and behavioural patterns and lifelong personal habits (e.g. physical activity, diet, smoking and alcoholism) that have developed through the process of socialisation and are learnt through social interactions from parents, peer groups, friends and siblings or through school and mass media. It also affects the health, where some of the present-day health problems like coronary heart disease, cancers and drug addiction have been demonstrated in the developing countries and elsewhere, with oral health detrimental behaviours being most common in the subjects of the lower socio-demographic status. Thus, an attempt is made to review the literature and take an insight into the influence of lifestyle on oral health.