Smoking and Dental Health

Sometimes, it might seem like taking a drag off that cigarette is saving the life of your coworkers or customers, but what about your teeth? They may be bringing down your stress level now, however, when you start losing teeth because your smoking caused gum disease, it’s going to take a lot more than a smoke to get rid of the stress. Now we could go into detail about all the negative effects that smoking cigarettes can cause to your body, but we would be here for a while. Besides, our focus as dentists is on your mouth, so we’ll be exploring what the effects of smoking is on your overall dental health.

Just to clarify before we begin, this article is not aimed purely at cigarettes, but smoking tobacco in general. Rather it is a cigarette, a cigar, or a pipe, they all present the same risks. Smoking cannabis also causes damage to our dental health, but we will not be covering it’s effects in this article.

The first effects we will look at are the most immediate and well known, bad breath and yellow teeth.

Bad Breath: How does smoking affect how our breath smells? First off, smoke particles and chemicals linger in our mouth and throat for some time after you smoke a cigarette, creating the most immediate cause of bad breath. Smoking also reduces the saliva (that helps clean our mouth) our mouth produces,which among other dental problems, hampers our mouth’s ability to get rid of odor causing bacteria.

Yellow Teeth: Cigarettes have tar and nicotine in this, which leave stains on your teeth. Even just one cigarette is enough to start leaving stains on your teeth. Match this with the reduced amount of saliva to help clean the stains and they begin to build up over time.

That is just the cosmetic disadvantages that smoking causes. At the very least, the effects of smoking on the body make the cosmetic aspects of it seem small by comparison. These can include:

Bone Loss in the Jaw
Increased Risk of Leukoplakia (White patches inside the mouth)
Increased Risk of Gum Disease
Delayed Healing
Increased Risk of Oral Cancer

Sadly the damage that smoke can do to teeth isn’t only caused by direct smoking. If you are subjected to secondhand smoke, your dental health can still suffer from it. Of course it will be to a lesser extent, however, it should still be avoided. If you are an avid smoker, keep this in mind when you smoke around people. Don’t put their smile at risk because you need to have a smoke break.

Other Tobacco and Smoking Mediums

While smoking tobacco in it’s various forms is dangerous, so are other forms of nicotine intake. Chewing tobacco, for instance has a lot of harmful chemicals for your teeth, and the trendy vaping scene doesn’t have as prominent cosmetic problems like those that come with smoking cigarettes, but still does can cause bad breath and harm to your mouth, gums, and tongue. Nicotine itself, regardless of how it enters our mouth, is going to harm our dental health. Even if you use the bare minimum, it is still affecting your gums, teeth, tongue, and overall health, not to mention the cost of the habit.

If you are ready to start turning around the damage done to your teeth because of smoking and nicotine, there are several programs like Tobacco Free Florida that can help you on the road to quitting. There is also Drs. Costello and Drake, who can help you begin getting rid of the yellow teeth, bring back that white, vibrant smile and restore your overall oral health.