How Tooth Loss Impacts Your Oral and General Health, and Appearance

Anyone in Ajax who has lost teeth will already know it can be extremely upsetting. Many of us gain at least some of our self-esteem and self-confidence from our appearance, which can take a knock when we know our smile isn’t its best. If that wasn’t bad enough, tooth loss could have a significant effect on oral health.

Your Teeth are Designed to Work Together
Although teeth may be individual units, and each tooth has a unique name and number indicating its position in the mouth, they are designed to work together as a complete system. Each tooth protects its neighbours, helping to keep them in place and ensuring the load created when you bite or chew food is evenly distributed. When you lose teeth in Pickering, the wear and tear on your remaining teeth increases, so there is a higher risk they will wear down or will chip or crack.

Chewing Food Without Teeth is Tricky!
Your anterior or front teeth are used to cut and tear food, while your posterior or back teeth are used for grinding and chewing, beginning the process of digestion. When you are unable to chew food comfortably and efficiently, it can negatively impact digestion. Often, people missing multiple teeth in Whitby will adjust their diet, eating softer, easier to chew foods that might not contain all the vitamins and minerals needed for optimum oral and general health.

How Tooth Loss Affects Appearance
Obviously, missing teeth will give you a gappy smile, but the effects of losing multiple teeth, particularly your back teeth, are far more significant. When you lose back teeth, it can change the vertical height of your face, reducing it, so your facial features start to collapse inwards. These changes also affect your front teeth, increasing the pressure on these teeth, so they begin to splay outwards. As well as affecting appearance, loss of vertical height can also impact your jaw joints, and your facial muscles won’t be supported correctly. As this height diminishes, the corners of the mouth might begin to droop, and wrinkles become more pronounced. Tooth loss also has social consequences because smiling, talking and laughing with others is more difficult. Some people will even avoid social occasions and can become more isolated.

The Solutions for Tooth Loss
Even if you only lose a single tooth in Brooklin, it is essential to replace it to protect your dental and general health, and of course, to restore your smile! Options include removable and non-removable dental appliances. Traditional dentures are removable appliances while dental bridges supported by existing natural teeth are non-removable restorations. However, dental implants are increasingly popular.

Why Choose Dental Implants?
Unlike other options, well-planned dental implants in Oshawa provide a long-term solution for missing teeth while protecting and preserving existing natural teeth, and dental implant teeth are self-supporting. It is an important point to make because ordinary bridges are supported by teeth adjacent to the missing tooth, and these teeth require significant reshaping before they can be crowned. Your dentist might end up removing perfectly healthy tooth structure to make and fit your bridge.

The implants are firmly anchored in your jawbone, providing excellent support for implant crowns, bridges, or implant dentures. Implant crowns and bridges are cemented or screwed onto the dental implants and are only removed by a dentist, while implant-supported dentures clip securely onto the dental implants but can still be easily removed for regular cleaning.

There are lots of different options available for replacing missing teeth in Newcastle, but dental implants are increasingly regarded as the premier solution for tooth loss. You can discover precisely how they could help you during your initial consultation here at Durham Implant Solutions. Interested? Contact us to book your appointment.

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