The human smile is a beautiful thing that serves to help form words, chew food, and flash a confident grin at other people. In fact, studies have found that people who smile often are seen as friendly, approachable, and self-assured, making it easier for them to win trust, close sales, and make friends. Unfortunately, many people are anxious about showing their smiles because they are embarrassed about missing teeth. Here’s why replacing your missing teeth with dental implants is nothing to be ashamed of.
Getting Dental Implants Shows You Care About Your Health
Traditional restorations like dentures and bridges can be fantastic ways for many people to restore their smiles, but they leave a lot to be desired when it comes to chewing. As lifelike and comfortable as these restorations are, they don’t have the sturdy foundation they need to exert maximum force when biting, tearing, or chewing food. Crunchy foods like apples, nuts, and celery and chewy foods like steak and pork chops are often all but completely off limits for people with these restorations, and many of them can suffer from malnutrition because of this.
Luckily, dental implants can handle any kind of food that natural teeth can, allowing a patient to enjoy the varied and nutritious diet their body needs to stay healthy. Dental implants are also easier to take care of than bridges and dentures because they only require the same daily hygiene routine as real teeth. This makes it much easier to prevent cavities and gum disease that can lead to dangerous secondary infections like sepsis or pneumonia.
Dental Implants Can Preserve the Health of Your Jaw
The jawbone needs plenty of exercise to stay healthy, and this stimulation usually comes from the teeth during chewing. The jaw loses this stimulation after tooth loss and will begin to recede around the empty socket. If this is allowed to continue, it can pull neighboring teeth out of alignment, making them harder to clean and easier to injure, potentially resulting in a vicious cycle of continuing tooth loss. If too many teeth are lost, the whole mouth can begin to sink into the face, leaving it with an elderly and withered appearance.
Dentures and dental bridges do nothing to restore this exercise, so oral bone loss will continue while wearing them. Dental implants, however, restore this lost stimulation because they are surgically placed directly within the jawbone. This can prevent or even reverse the atrophy of the jaw.
Dental implants are a positive step forward for your appearance and your overall health. It is commendable to go through the effort of getting them.
About the Author
Dr. Suzanne Land earned her dental degree at the Temple University School of Dentistry and has several decades of experience in the dental field. She has taken extensive continuing education courses on subjects like full mouth reconstruction and esthetic reconstruction. Her office in Moorestown, NJ offers general, cosmetic, restorative, and emergency dentistry in addition to dental implant services. For more information on getting dental implants, contact her office online or dial (856) 235-0449.