Thursday, 18 February 2016

Smoking and Teeth

Smoking and Teeth

We are all aware of the horrors of smoking and what it does to our health, mainly our lungs and heart. What exactly does it do to our mouths? The main threat is one of oral cancer. This is life threatening and should always be our first cause to quit smoking.

Regarding your teeth, smoking will initially cause bad breath and stained and discoloured teeth. This is unsightly and unattractive to everyone. It will also discolour your tongue. What smoking also does is cause the blood vessels in your gums to close up slightly making them less likely to bleed. So if you smoke, you may notice that your gums may bleed less. This sounds like a bonus doesn’t it? I am afraid not.

If blood is not circulating well through your gums then they are not healthy. The valuable nutrients and healing properties carried your bloodstream will not be feeding your gums and so if they have a problem, such as gum disease, you will not be aware of it and it will not be healing.

This will cause gum disease to progress, allow the harmful bacteria involved in gum disease to fight on, cause them to erode the bone away from around the teeth and eventually lead to painful abscesses and loss of teeth. This will of course take a long time before you start losing teeth but the more you smoke, the damage you will cause.

Smoking has no benefits. Its expensive, it stinks, it makes everything else stink, causes cancer, can alienate people around you, is harmful to those around you, causes breathing difficulties and ruins your teeth. Stop smoking today! Make use of hypnosis, nicotine replacement gums and patches, seek help from your doctor. There are no excuses anymore!


Dr David Hurst BDS (Lon)

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