The Social and Mental Symptoms of Poor Dental Health
Is hiding your smile stopping you from succeeding? We have talked quite a bit about how dangerous poor dental health can be to the body, but what about to our image? Not just how the world perceives us, but more so how we perceive us. While keeping up appearances are good for things such as jobs and social lives, the most important aspect of it is how our appearance affects ourself. Low self esteem that stems from a poor self image can lead to a wide variety of symptoms that weave their way into all aspects of our everyday life. This is why visiting your local dentist is so crucial to your dental and mental health.
How important is your smile? Celebrities wouldn’t be getting their teeth fancied up if they didn’t need them to succeed. That goes for you as well, a bright smile makes our appearance radiate all the way across the room. It’s one of the easiest ways to make yourself stand out in any crowd. Photos of you can change dramatically when you decide to go with a open mouth smile compared to just a simple lip grin. When you go into a job interview, a simple smile with your lips close will not wow anyone. Walk into that interviewer’s office with a bright white smile though, and you might land the job before you even shake their hand.
A bright smile also gives us a major boost in our confidence. Simply the act of smiling can literally brighten our mood. Studies have shown that regardless of your mood, a big smile can help give us a positive boost. Our mind connects smiling with positive thoughts, working similarly to the reward mechanism of our brains. It doesn’t stop there though. When we smile, we can actually pass it on to someone else. When they see you smile, their mind tells them to mimic the expression or emotion, causing them to smile back. When they return the smile, their mind starts feeling a positive boost in its mood as well. So saying someone’s smile is contagious isn’t just a figure of speech, it’s an actual fact.
There are some unseen advantages to this boost in confidence that we might not realize. Instilling confidence in ourselves can improve our own self image, and that can help stop a lot of psychological and social problems, many of which can be linked to depression. When we have a low self image, or low self esteem, we can begin to develop symptoms of depression such as a tendency to isolate ourselves from other people, to feel fatigued, lose interest in common hobbies, poor self care, and change our outlook on life even. That extra bit of confidence that a bright smile offers us can help keep us from the mental anguish of depression.
If you haven’t joined the millions of American’s greeting every new day with a welcoming smile, there is no better time to start than now. Drs. Costello and Drake have extensive knowledge, years of experience, and a wide selection of procedures to bring even the worse smiles back to photo ready shape. Rather it is something as simple as a tooth cleaning, or as extensive as replacing teeth with crowns or bridges, the dentists at Atlantic Dentist in Ormond Beach have the solution to any dental problem you can find.