Your Missing Teeth Could Be Affecting Your Health
April 8, 2019
Whether you’re missing just one tooth or many teeth, your oral health could be at risk. While a missing tooth may primarily be an aesthetic issue at first, over time it can lead to a variety of oral health problems. Some of these problems can be time-consuming and costly to fix if they are allowed to progress. Here are a few of the top ways your missing teeth could be affecting your health, and how dental implants can help.
Shifting Teeth
Anytime you lose a tooth, the teeth around it want to fill in the empty space. Over time, they start to shift toward the empty tooth socket. When this happens, your bite (the way your upper and lower teeth fit together) changes. Depending on the severity of your bite changes, you may need to receive orthodontics to fix the problem. If you have dental implants placed soon after you lose one or more teeth, you won’t need to worry about your teeth shifting out of place. Implants act like place holders for your natural teeth and fill in the gaps caused by tooth loss.
Limited Dental Function
Your dental function is inevitably affected by missing teeth. Whether you’re missing one tooth or 10, you’ll have a harder time enjoying food, especially if it’s crunchy, hard or chewy. If you’d like to enjoy a wide variety of foods and maintain a varied diet, consider talking to your periodontist about implants.
Jaw Bone Loss
One of the scariest risk factors of tooth loss is the jaw bone loss that occurs. It’s a slow process, but begins soon after your tooth is lost. Without consistent stimulation normally provided by the tooth roots, the bone of the jaw loses density. To keep this from happening, talk to your periodontist about the possibility of receiving dental implants.
Call Our Practice
We’d love to tell you more about the risk factors associated with tooth loss and why dental implants are an ideal solution. To schedule an appointment with Dr. Ann Kania, call our office in Encinitas, CA today!