Need Another Reason to Quit Smoking?

It’s not exactly a shocking revelation that smoking is bad for you. Any time that a warning label has to be put on something that says “this will eventually kill you,” there’s a good indicator that it’s unhealthy. Lung cancer, emphysema and heart disease are just a few of the consequences of long term smoking but it’s also horrible for your dental health as well.

It Will Wreak Havoc On Your Mouth!

You’ve surely seen the yellowed teeth on people who’ve been smoking for a long time, but the problems can go way deeper than that. Smoking or the use of any tobacco product can lead to gum disease, due to the fact that it affects the attachment of bone and soft tissue of your teeth. Smoking also interferes with the normal function of gum and tissue cells. This interference can make you much more vulnerable to infections like periodontal disease and can severely impair blood flow to the gums. So essentially, it severely damages the gums and then completely interferes with the body’s ability to then heal from that constant damage. It can increase the amount of plaque and tartar on your teeth, mostly due to the residue that smoke leaves behind. Have you ever looked at a smokers walls or the windshield of a smoker’s car? Eventually an oily residue is left behind. Well that can happen to your teeth as well. Smoking can also lower the chances of a successful dental implant procedure and even delay the healing process following a tooth extraction, dental implant, or even minor dental surgery. And that’s just naming a few of the problems, there’s plenty more where that came from.

There is No “Light Cigarette”

If you think it’s just cigarettes that can cause all this, think again. It’s all tobacco products: pipe tobacco, cigars, and even chewing tobacco. The yellow stained teeth are actually the least of your problems considering yet another possible outcome of smoking or chewing tobacco is throat or mouth cancer. In point of fact, chewing tobacco may actually be worse than smoking. Studies have shown that chewing tobacco contains at least 28 chemicals that have been conclusively proven to increase the risk of oral cancer and also cancer of the throat and esophagus. The bottom line here is that smoking or chewing tobacco is incredibly harmful and detrimental to your body as a whole. If you smoke or chew tobacco, you most definitely need to see a general dentist, such as Dr. Hall, on a regular basis, perhaps even more so than a non-smoker. Come in anytime and talk to Dr. Andrew Hall if you do smoke, especially if you’re planning a dental implant procedure with him. He can go over the risks more in depth with you if you’d like, and can try to help you to keep the damage in check.