The Serious Drawbacks of Missing Teeth

Your teeth are designed to last a lifetime. However, that doesn’t mean that teeth can’t fall out or need removal from time to time. Whether you lost a permanent tooth in a bad accident or you needed several teeth extracted due to severe decay, it is not uncommon for patients to experience the loss of natural teeth. Once a tooth is gone, however, there’s no use in wallowing in your loss. It won’t grow back and the time is ticking in terms of replacing that missing tooth (or teeth).

Why is timely tooth replacement important? When not replaced, missing teeth invite a number of unwanted consequences within your smile as well as your overall well-being.

Aesthetic Compromise: The most obvious setback is the appearance of your smile with gaps of missing teeth. When a natural tooth goes missing up front, the embarrassment can be even more severe.

Speech and Chewing Limitations: In many cases, it only takes one missing tooth to change the way you eat and speak. Problems can range from a simple annoyance to more severe challenges within your nutritional/digestive health and how you communicate with others.

Shifting Teeth: A less known fact about missing teeth is the impact on neighboring teeth. It won’t take long before the adjacent teeth begin to migrate towards the open space in your smile. This invites a host of dental health concerns, including misalignment as well as decay and gum disease due to new tight spaces and cleaning difficulties.

Premature Facial Aging: When a tooth goes missing, there is no longer a tooth root to stimulate the jaw bone underneath. Just like other bones in our body, the jaw needs routine stimulation in order to retain its form and density. Therefore, missing teeth often lead to the progression of bone loss within the jaw and a consequential “hallowed” appearance in the lower face. This is often termed as premature facial aging. Dental implants are the only restorative solution that can help patients avoid bone loss after missing teeth.

Have you recently lost a natural tooth? Whether it is a single tooth in the back of your smile or a full arch of absent teeth, we can offer a smile restoration to help you regain your confidence, health and quality of life. Most of all, our restorative dental procedures at Riverwood Dental can help you avoid the disruptive drawbacks of missing teeth!