How Dental Implants Can Improve Your Oral Health

Whether you’ve lost one or more teeth to deep dental decay, advanced gum disease, or a traumatic injury, the gaps in your smile can make it harder to eat and leave you feeling less confident in your appearance.      

But tooth loss doesn’t just diminish your smile; it also undermines your oral health in a variety of detrimental and far-reaching ways. Empty spaces in your mouth can:

• Allow adjacent teeth to drift
• Shrink underlying bone tissue
• Change jaw and facial shape
• Lead to a bite misalignment
• Cause uneven enamel wear
• Make gum disease more likely  
• Elevate your tooth decay risk

While you have a range of tooth replacement options to choose from, only one solution — dental implants — can completely restore oral aesthetics, function, and health. 

Our restorative dental specialists at Associated Oral & Maxillofacial Surgeons recommend dental implants whenever they’re a viable option. Here, Dr. Roger Badwal and Dr. Anthony Camillo explain why they’re the best tooth replacement solution for your oral health.   

Implants maintain jawbone health

Every natural tooth has a root that fueled its development and keeps it firmly attached to your jawbone. But a tooth’s root doesn’t just serve the tooth itself; it also stimulates its surrounding osseous tissues to keep your jawbone strong and healthy.  

When you lose a tooth, the empty socket of bone tissue no longer receives the stimulation it needs to remodel and rebuild itself at a normal, continuous rate. As time goes on, the empty jawbone area begins to shrink and recede.  

A dental implant is an artificial tooth root made of titanium. When it’s surgically placed in your jaw, it stimulates the surrounding bone tissues — just like a natural tooth root — to keep them strong and healthy. No other dental restoration (i.e., bridges, dentures) can accomplish this.

Implants preserve bite alignment

“Drift” is another oral health complication of missing teeth that dental implants can correct. When you lose a tooth, the adjacent teeth around the gap in your smile begin to shift toward the gap, often turning inward or outward and becoming crooked in the process. 

When natural teeth start to drift toward a gap, it can trigger a cascade of oral health issues. Your bite may become misaligned, and as you compensate with altered chewing patterns, you may experience excessive or uneven dental wear (i.e., enamel and chew surface) along with chronic jaw pain.

By permanently filling the gap in your smile with an artificial replacement tooth, a dental implant preserves proper bite alignment and helps protect your natural teeth. The exposed portion of the implant post is finished with a durable porcelain crown that fits in with your natural teeth and matches your bite perfectly. 

Implants protect your teeth and gums

Bone tissue loss and jawbone shrinkage, shifting teeth, bite misalignment, excessive dental wear, and jaw pain may be the first major oral health problems prompted by missing teeth, but without prompt restorative treatment, they’re not the last. 

Given that shifting teeth and a misaligned bite can make it harder to reach certain spots when you brush and floss, having gaps in your smile increases your chances of developing dental decay and periodontal (gum) disease — both of which can readily lead to additional tooth loss.  

Replacing a missing tooth with a dental implant as soon as possible helps guard against the kind of secondary dental decay and gum disease that’s associated with unresolved tooth loss. 

Restore your smile and your oral health

If maintaining good oral health is important to you, then dental implants are — without a doubt — the best available tooth replacement solution to correct the gaps in your smile. 

Our Associated Oral & Maxillofacial Surgeons team is here to help. Give us a call at your nearest office in Danbury, Ridgefield, or Southbury, Connecticut, today, or fill out our online form to schedule a consultation at your convenience.