How are your teeth? Do you see your dentist on a regular basis for a checkup? It's a good idea. Dentures are okay, but nothing beats a good, firm set of your own teeth for looks, convenience and chewing power.

Now there's another reason a dentist appointment might be beneficial to your health. An article from CBC News Canada tells us:

At a meeting of the International Association for Dental Research in New Orleans on Thursday, Prof. Paul van der Stelt of the Academic Center for Dentistry Amsterdam and his team announced they have developed a software-based approach to detect signs of osteoporosis using routine dental X-rays.

Automatically analyzing information from dental X-rays to detect patients at risk for osteoporosis would involve no extra time, radiation and almost no more cost, the researchers said.

Osteoporosis is, according to Wikipedia:

........ a disease of bone in which the bone mineral density (BMD) is reduced, bone microarchitecture is disrupted, and the amount and variety of non-collagenous proteins in bone is altered. Osteoporotic bones are more at risk of fracture.

The CBC Canada article goes on to say:

The approach uses software to analyze specific traits in bone patterns, such as thickness, amount of fragmentation and the main orientation of trabecular bone - a spongy mesh at the end of bones that becomes thinner and more porous with age.