Smoking is a dangerous habit that exposes you to a wide range of deadly diseases. Aside from causing a wide array of diseases, smoking also makes it extremely hard to replace missing teeth with implants – though not impossible. Studies have also revealed that smoking affects the longevity of your dental implants. Therefore, if you are planning to have your missing teeth replaced with dental implants, you need to consider quitting smoking. Also, do not forget to let your doctor know about your smoking habit before they start operating on you. Maybe you are wondering what smoking has got to do with dental health? Well, here are some of the reasons why you need to stop smoking before you get dental implants.
Where There’s Smoke…
First of all, smoking burns your mouth tissues, causing the formation of keratosis – a thick layer of skin cells. It also causes mouth dryness by occluding and damaging salivary glands. Because of the high level of nicotine found in cigarettes, people who smoke tend to have damaged peripheral blood vessels. These vessels get clamped down, reducing the amount of blood they transport to other parts of the body. With reduced blood flow, your immune system loses effectiveness and your body is unable to fight off opportunistic diseases. It also means that the surgical wounds sustained during teeth replacement will take longer to heal and may not even heal properly.
Dry mouth is a breeding ground for disease-causing bacteria, which exposes you to severe periodontal disease. Remember that prolonged exposure to tobacco puts you at the risk of getting cardiovascular, lung, and metabolic disorders. It also exposes you to the risk of getting cancer. And so, you can now see quite clearly why your teeth replacement may not be entirely successful if you are a smoker. Although the success of a dental implant mainly depends on the type of material used to create it and its compatibility with the jawbone (osseo-integration), smoking after the teeth replacement surgery causes delayed healing, gum infection, and possibly the loss of implants.
Give Your Dental Implants The Help They Need To Heal
Medical experts claim that the risk of complications during the first healing phase is very high in smokers and people who have a long history of smoking. Furthermore, dental implants in the mouth of a smoker risk developing complications even after they have healed because of the environment inside the mouth. So, if you want the best chance of your dental implants to remain healthy and stable for a long time, quit smoking now.
