You might think that a missing tooth is unsightly, and you are right. But do you know that missing teeth can affect not only your dental health, but also your overall health?
Dr. Bart Kreiner runs his own dental practice, Dr. Kreiner Family Dentistry, in Bel Air, Maryland. Here, he talks about how missing teeth not only affect the aesthetics of your smile, but your dental and overall health as well. Effect on overall health.
As is known to all, because your ability to chew decreases with missing teeth, it directly affects your overall medical health. Chewing food is the beginning of the digestive process. If you lose a tooth, then you can’t chew the food properly before swallowing, the stomach and intestines will work harder to absorb nutrients. That means you absorb fewer nutrients and are less healthy. It shows that your missing teeth affect your overall health.
Effect on Dental Health
Teeth like to be touching each other, so if you extract a tooth and do not replace it in time, the surrounding teeth will fall toward the hole and the teeth opposite the hole will super-erupt. When that happens, it can cause premature loss of additional teeth. So it’s important to replace the missing tooth as soon as possible.
Effect On Occlusion
Missing teeth can also affect your occlusion.
Although you lose teeth, you still have the same amount of muscles, which means that you continue to chew with the same amount of force, regardless of how many teeth you have. As a result, the exerted force will affect your other teeth in a negative fashion.
Applying more force leads to more cracks and more breakage of the remaining teeth. So it’s harmful to your occlusion.
Wisdom Teeth
If you lose a tooth, you should see your dentist as soon as possible to discuss ways of getting a replacement, which could be a denture, a dental implant, or other method. Generally speaking, a missing tooth or teeth should be replaced as soon as possible, except wisdom teeth.
Nowadays, as our diet has become more refined and less coarse through the process of evolution, we need fewer teeth. So the human jaw size is becoming smaller and do not have enough room for wisdom teeth or third molars. This means that if your wisdom teeth are extracted, it will make no difference to you.
