Dental implants offer a wide range of benefits that traditional restorations like dentures and dental bridges cannot match, but did you know that they may help you live longer as well? By replacing lost teeth with lifelike prosthetic devices that look, work, and feel just like the real thing, implants can allow you to enjoy better digestion while avoiding the many oral health problems caused by tooth loss. Here’s a brief guide to how dental implants may be able to extend your lifespan.
Dental Implants Help You Eat Well
The human body needs a diverse diet of nutritious foods to stay healthy and strong, but a lot of nutrient-rich fare is too tough or crunchy for traditional dentures and bridges to handle. Thankfully, dental implants can exert almost as much chewing force as real teeth, allowing them to effectively tear, grind, and pulverize all sorts of tasty foods like the chewiest steaks, the crunchiest nuts, and the snappiest raw fruits and veggies.
In addition to helping patients avoid malnutrition, dental implants can also help them avoid indigestion. Thorough chewing is a crucial part of the digestive process that allows the body to easily extract nutrients from food, and not being able to masticate properly can lead to stomach pain and bowel trouble. By restoring the patient’s chewing power, dental implants can allow a patient to avoid gastric problems and enjoy pleasant digestion.
Dental Implants Prevent Oral Infections
Briefly after a tooth is lost, the part of the jawbone that supported it begins to atrophy and recede. As the bone structure shrinks away, it can pull adjacent teeth along with it, which can slowly draw them out of alignment and leave them vulnerable to injuries and infections that can lead to their loss. To make matters worse, dental infections can spread to other teeth in the mouth or even other people through oral contact.
If left untreated, this spreading tooth decay will destroy more teeth and possibly cause dangerous secondary infections like sepsis or pneumonia. As more teeth are lost, the jawbone will atrophy more severely and quickly, and it will eventually leave the patient’s mouth with a withered and sunken appearance.
Fortunately, dental implants function almost exactly like real teeth once they are installed in the jawbone, which means that they restore the stimulation the jaw needs to stay healthy and strong. This can prevent or even reverse the process of bone loss, thereby preserving the shape of the face and the alignment of the remaining teeth while reducing the risk of destructive oral infections.
Don’t let tooth loss erode your overall health. Consulting with your dentist can help you find out if dental implants may be the best restorations for you.
About the Author
Dr. Nelson Y. Howard earned his dental degree at the UCLA School of Dentistry and his General Practice Residency at the V.A. Medical Center in West Los Angeles. He is proud to be an Accredited Member of the American Academy of Cosmetic Dentistry and a member of the editorial review board of the Journal of Cosmetic Dentistry. His offices in San Marcos and San Diego offer general, restorative, cosmetic, and emergency dentistry as well as dental implants. To learn more about how implants can help, contact his office online.