Most patients learn about heart disease from their cardiologist. Almost none of them learn about it from their dentist. That is the gap. When gums are chronically inflamed, the lining of your mouth is leaking. Bacteria and inflammatory signals enter your bloodstream every time you chew, brush, or floss. Over years, that drip is not nothing. The bacterium most implicated, Porphyromonas gingivalis, has been recovered from atherosclerotic plaque in published research. It does not arrive in the artery by accident. Periodontitis sends inflammatory markers like C-reactive protein and IL-6 into circulation, and chronic vascular inflammation is one of the engines behind atherosclerosis and coronary artery disease.