How Missing Teeth Affect Your Health & Appearance
Are You Missing One or More Teeth?
If you have experienced tooth loss, you already know how this can make you feel about your appearance.
When you’re teeth & gums are in great shape, you have no problem smiling.
But when you’re missing one or more teeth smiling is not something you want to do, and when you feel self-conscious about your smile it lowers your self-confidence.
Beyond all of the aesthetics and the emotional impact, missing just one tooth can have a major impact on your oral & overall health.
Tooth loss can lead to the shifting of the surrounding teeth, your teeth will actually begin to migrate toward the empty space.
The misalignment and empty space where natural tooth structure should be will often result in increased tooth decay & gum disease issues.
Furthermore, a missing tooth can result in major issues with overall health due to the associated loss of jawbone.
You Need All Of Your Teeth
Teeth play an important role in talking, eating and in maintaining proper alignment of other teeth.
Tooth loss is not natural, and it’s not something that just occurs with age.
Humans have 32 teeth, some of us have less, whether that’s due to tooth loss or having your wisdom teeth removed as a teenager.
Each tooth in our mouth has a specific function, name, and even a number.
Even though our teeth are classified individually, they work in conjunction with each other as part of a healthy system.
Each tooth in your mouth works to help and protect the adjacent teeth, by keeping them in place and by distributing the load created when you bite or chew food.
When you lose a tooth, the wear and tear on your remaining teeth increases, and this leads to the potential for chipping or cracking of those remaining teeth.
You Need Your Teeth To Bite & Chew
Your front teeth are used to cut and tear food, your back teeth are used for chewing.
When you can no longer chew your food effectively and without discomfort it can negatively impact digestion.
What happens a lot with people who are missing one or more teeth, is that people tend to change their diet by eating softer foods that are easier to chew.
This affects your health because when you can’t eat healthy foods like fruits, vegetables, and nuts, you’re not receiving the essential vitamins and minerals needed for optimum oral and overall health.
Furthermore, tooth loss will lead to the loss of your jawbone if it’s not addressed and treated effectively.
People who have dentures know this and are often self-conscious about the “sunken in” look that their mouth & jaw being to take on due to tooth loss.
With dentures, the alignment of your jaw actually changes because of how the bone and gum ridges recede or shrink due to the missing tooth structure.
How Tooth Loss Affects Your Appearance
Having a gap-tooth smile is not a beauty trend, it’s unhealthy and it negatively affects your appearance.
The effects of losing multiple teeth, particularly your back teeth, are far more significant. When you lose any of your back teeth, the effects will change the structure and visual appearance of your face.
Due to the associated bone loss, your facial features will actually start to collapse, leading to that “sunken in” look.
This is one reason why dental implants are the healthiest solution to one or more missing teeth.
Your front teeth are also adversely affected when you’re missing one or more teeth.
Because of the increased pressure on those front teeth from normal biting & tearing when eating, they begin to spread outwards.
As with the loss of back teeth, missing front teeth can also impact your jaw joints and your facial muscles.
Without the supporting tooth root structure, your jawbone will erode and your jaw & facial muscles will not be optimally supported.
As this condition progresses, the corners of your mouth might begin to droop, and wrinkles could become more pronounced.
Tooth loss also has social consequences because smiling, talking and laughing with others is more difficult.
Due to this reduction in self-esteem, some people tend to avoid social occasions and can become more isolated.
Good thing there is a solution to one or more missing teeth, one that can restore both your health and your self-confidence.
The Best Solution for Missing Teeth
Even if you are missing just one single tooth it’s important to have it treated and replaced.
The absolute healthiest way to replace one or more missing teeth is with a dental implant.
Unlike other tooth-replacement options, dental implants provide a long-term solution that preserves jawbone and protects the adjacent teeth.
Dental implants are surgically anchored into your jawbone, mimicking your natural tooth structure.
Your jawbone bonds with the implant, creating a strong foundation and affording a healthier more comfortable lifelong solution.
Dental implants restore your ability to chew any and all foods as well as restore confidence in your smile.
Here at Wayne Dental Arts, we perform both the surgical and restorative aspects of implant dentistry, our patients don’t have to visit multiple doctors for each treatment phase.
- 3D CT Imaging
- Dental Implant Surgery
- Bone Grafting (addition of bone where your natural bone is deficient – if needed)
- Dental Implant Restoration
People rediscover the joys of smiling more, feeling better about themselves, and eating their favorite foods that sometimes those with dental bridges or dentures can’t.
Somerset NJ Dental Implants: Advanced Dental Arts by Joseph Haddad, D.D.S.
Our patient’s comfort is our primary concern. We proudly provide quality implant dentistry care to Somerset, NJ. 08873, in addition to the surrounding areas of Bound Brook, Hillsborough Township, Readington Township, and Bridgewater.
We offer the most advanced technology in implant dentistry including surgery, bone-grafting, restoration, and we proudly offer several types of dental sedation for our patient’s comfort.
We’ll be glad to hear from you if you have any questions. The first step towards a beautiful, healthy smile is to schedule an appointment, please call us today at (732) 545-8111.
Mention this blog post & get $500 off your dental implant treatment:
Let us give you something to smile about!
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Posted by
chrissocdent
on Sep 20th, 2018
12:43 pm
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Tags: Dental Implants, missing teeth, tooth loss
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