Bacteria that cause gum disease are often found in the fatty buildups in your arteries—this suggests that poor oral health might be linked to heart disease, even though it doesn’t prove one causes the other.

Bacteria from gum disease can sometimes escape the mouth and show up in the bloodstream—even in people with healthy hearts—suggesting they might travel from your gums to other parts of your body.

Scientists think that when several mouth bacteria that cause gum disease show up together in clogged arteries, they team up to make the inflammation worse and the plaque more likely to break loose—like a gang causing more trouble than one person alone.

Having a certain type of gum bacteria called Porphyromonas gingivalis may be linked to worse heart disease — it seems to make plaque build up more in your arteries, damage the lining of your blood vessels, and cause more body-wide inflammation, which you can see in blood tests and artery scans.