Assessment of Stress and Periodontal Health Status among Individuals Practicing Yoga with Age and Gender Matched Controls in Hyderabad City: A Case-control Study

Introduction: Stress, the most basic psycho-social factor causes disruption of a person’s physiological as well as psychological well-being. Yoga originated in India thousands of years ago, is a primordial philosophical system aimed at bringing harmony to the individual’s physical, mental, and emotional aspects.

Aim: To examine and compare the stress and periodontal health status of yoga practitioners in Hyderabad city with age and gender matched controls.

Materials and Methods: This case-control study was conducted on 278 subjects by the Department of Public Health Dentistry, Kamineni Institute of Dental Sciences, Narketpally Nalgonda, Hyderabad, Telangana, India from August 2019 to January 2020. Out of the selected subjects, 139 were the cases, aged between 25-40 years, who were practicing yoga in hyderabad city regularly while 139 were age and gender matched controls, selected from general population, not practicing yoga. The survey tool comprised of the Perceived Stress Scale (PSS developed by Cohen S et al.,). Oral health status was recorded using the World Health Organisation (WHO) Basic Oral Health Survey Assessment Form of 2013. The data was analysed using version 21.0 of the Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS). Statistical significance was set at p≤0.05.

Results: The total of 278 subjects (139 cases; mean age 28.30±7.73 years and 139 controls; mean age 29.25±7.73 years) were included. Both the genders in the control group had noticeably elevated mean scores for caries status (1.50±0.59), periodontal status (3.69±0.57) and Loss of Attachment (LOA) (code 1: 1.63±1.33) and overall PSS score (1.81±0.60) compared to cases. The difference in periodontitis (p-value=0.05), OHI-S (Simplified Oral Hygiene Index) scores (p-value <0.001), PSS scores (p-value <0.001) and gingival scores (p-value <0.001) was found significant. A similar trend was noted when compared with both males and female regarding OHI-S and gingival scores but the difference was statistically non significant. The PSS score difference was found significant with age (p-value=0.02), gender (p-value=0.02) and subjects who were practicing yoga regularly (1.67±0.69) (p<0.001) as compared to controls. However, all age groups who were not practicing yoga reported with poor periodontal health with high LOA scores compared to practitioners and no significant association was found between perceived stress and method (p-value=0.22) or frequency (p-value=0.17) of cleaning their teeth.

Conclusion: This study finding is extremely important for Indian population, where more than 50% of the population is suffering with gum diseases due to stress. Hence, suitable preventive and treatment approaches are endorsing to combat from the stress and periodontal disease. Therefore, yoga is effective in prevention of oral diseases and maintenance of personal as well as oral hygiene and healthy gingiva by improving the lifestyle, reducing the tension and periodontal inflammation.