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How Missing Teeth
Affect Your Health
Here are three consequences on
how missing teeth affect you.
- Bone loss and premature aging.
- Compromising adjacent teeth.
- A limited diet and inadequate nutrition.
1. Bone loss and premature aging.
If you are missing 1 or many teeth, you are also losing
bone where the teeth used to be. If unattended to for too
long, your bone will recede. As you can see below (figure 1.2),
there can be significant bone loss when teeth are absent.
You may think that this is a little bit of an exaggeration,
but the truth is in the first year alone there can be
5 mm of bone loss where a tooth once was.
Figure 1.2: Comparison of a mouth with full teeth to a mouth with bone loss from missing teeth.
The only way to avoid bone loss is to have a tooth root or a dental implant acting as the root for the bone to fuse to. When you use dental implants for denture stabilization, not only do you avoid bone loss, but you also gain greater chewing ability as well.
2. Compromising adjacent teeth.
As soon as a tooth is lost the bone will atrophy and the teeth on either side will shift or tip into the empty space. If there is a tooth directly above or below the space it will overerupt, as there will not be anything to prevent it from coming out of the gum tissue. The majority of bone atrophy will occur within the first six months but will slowly continue for years.
The movement of the adjacent teeth will not occur immediately, rather it will become noticeable after three to five years. How fast it occurs will depend on the density of bone in the area, your bite and how well your teeth occlude or mesh into each other.
As you lose more teeth, you will be forced to chew in other areas, and this often leads to tooth fracture from overloading, excessive wear and or TMJ (jaw joint) problems. As a result more extensive and expensive dentistry may be required in the future.
If you are missing teeth and you do not replace them, these movements will occur. These movements may create gum problems and /or decay and could lead to the loss of other teeth.
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3. A limited diet and inadequate nutrition.
Many people don’t understand what it is like to loose their teeth. The simple pleasure of eating becomes difficult since dentures often move, hurt and simply do not chew food. In fact, you can loose approximately 80% or more of your chewing ability with full dentures and denture pastes.
Now we all know that proper nutrition adds extra years to our lives. Without it, our bodies will wear out sooner than we may hope. As dentures don’t allow for proper chewing, the proper diet of one can suffer. It poses the question, which of the following would you like?
"I won’t live long so why fix my teeth, or I’ll fix my teeth so I can live long."
If you are missing teeth, ask us if it is important to replace and the various options available. As we oftentimes mention, prevention and early treatment is always less involved and less expensive than delaying treatment until the problem becomes more serious.
Figure 1.1: Looking older than your years can affect the way you feel about yourself and the way other people view you. Most people who have lost their teeth and surrounding bone look older than their actual years.
What's Next?
Learn about tooth replacement options for:
