How a Missing Tooth Can Wreak Havoc in Your Mouth

Losing a tooth can be a painful and frustrating experience. Not only does it make eating uncomfortable, it also disrupts your smile and can change the way you speak, leading to feelings of embarrassment and social anxiety.

But a missing tooth isn’t just an aesthetic problem; if a tooth is not replaced quickly, it can cause extensive issues that affect your entire mouth.

This blog will explore some of the ways that losing a tooth can be harmful, and discuss options for replacing missing teeth that have fallen out due to disease or accident.

What You Lose When You Lose a Tooth

Your teeth are meant to work in concert with each other, each individual tooth serving a particular purpose. For example, when you bite into an apple, your incisors do the cutting, the canines do the tearing, your bicuspids and molars do the hard work of grinding the food down so it can be swallowed.

When everything is working as it should, we tend not to think about the choreography of our chewing — it isn’t until you lose a vital team member that you realize how important each tooth is.

Losing an incisor, canine, or molar will create an imbalance in your mouth, and because your teeth are designed to work together, when one is missing it puts additional strain on the rest of them. Over time, this can lead to:

• Uneven wear
• Tipping
• Drifting
• Eruption of nearby teeth

Not only does this further distort your smile, it can also cause pain when you chew and can lead to a weakening of the gums. Perhaps worst of all, if these changes are not checked over time they become much harder to fix.

How Dental Implants Can Restore Your Smile

The good news is that dental technology has progressed by leaps and bounds in recent years, and it’s easier than ever to replace a missing tooth with a durable implant that will be indistinguishable from the teeth around it.

If you or a family member you are responsible for has lost a tooth, the first thing to do is call a dental clinic in Hamilton that specializes in dental implants and cosmetic dentistry.

Dental implants are the gold standard for tooth replacement, and can last a lifetime. Finding a dentist who uses the latest techniques and can match the implant to the color and size of the teeth around it will ensure that you can’t tell the difference between the replacement and the teeth you were born with.

As any dentist will tell you, your body is a complex organism — overall good health is only possible when all of the overlapping systems in your body are working well together. A missing tooth impacts your oral health, which in turn can have far reaching effects on digestion and your cardiovascular system.

This is why a smile with gaps in it is never just an aesthetic issue. Finding a good local dentist who can advise you on your best options for dental implants is the best way to ensure that your missing tooth doesn’t become a domino that, having fallen, puts the health of your whole body at risk.