Smoking Impacts Your Oral and Overall Health
It is a given that smoking is bad for your health, but did you realize it is a key contributor to dental problems too? According to the American Dental Association (ADA), smoking and tobacco are also major contributors to dental problems. There have been strides made in educating the general public about the dangers of smoking, but the tobacco epidemic continues.
What are the concerns with the oral effects of smoking? Smoking bears the obvious hazard of lung cancer; cigarettes also cause bad breath, cause your clothes, furniture, hair, and skin to smell. And one of the biggest issues for smokers, who value a healthy smile, tobacco can leave permanent stains that cannot be whitened.
How Does Smoking Affect Your Oral Health?
Cigarettes and tobacco products have some obvious effects on your health, but they also impact the following:
- Tobacco products can leave permanent stains on your teeth that cannot be whitened.
- Smoking carries a substantial risk connected to gum and periodontal disease.
- Gum disease can affect the bone structure in your mouth, and it can result in decay and tooth loss.
- Tobacco makes it more difficult for your dentist to implement restorative dentistry.
- Tobacco causes a weakened sense of taste and smell.
- Tobacco hampers your immune system.
- Increases your body’s recovery time after surgery.
- Tobacco poses a major risk component for oral and other cancers. All tobacco products, such as chewing tobacco, snuff, cigarettes, pipe tobacco, cigars, and vaping, contain toxins that are cancer-causing carcinogens, and the addictive substance, nicotine.
- Tobacco users are 10 times more likely to get oral cancer than non-users, since the tobacco is held in the mouth where cancer usually occurs.
Other Forms of Tobacco and Oral Cancer
- Smokeless tobacco such as snuff, chewing tobacco and dip can lead to an even higher incidence of oral cancer. Over 28 cancer-causing compounds have been found in smokeless tobacco, which can cause gum disease.
- Snuff and chewing tobacco cause cancer in the cheek, tongue, mouth, lips, gums, voice box and esophagus because of the toxins in the tobacco products. It is common to swallow these carcinogenic toxins, which can cause cancer in other areas of the body.
- Smokeless tobacco also contains sand, which wears down your teeth, eroding the enamel and causing tooth sensitivity.
- 78 percent of smokeless tobacco users have oral lesions.
Does Vaping Fall into the Category of Tobacco Use?
- Vaping, although not a cigarette, has many of the negative effects to your oral health as smoking cigarettes. The nicotine in the vaping product increases the symptoms.
- Aerosols used in vaping increase gum inflammation.
- Sugars used to enhance the taste of e-cigarettes increase the hazards for tooth decay.
Advice for Those Who Use Tobacco Products
If you value your health, stop using tobacco products. Nicotine is addictive, so it may take effort to finally quit. The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) sponsors a Quitline to help you overcome your use of tobacco. This program helps provide support in quitting tobacco.
The American Cancer Society also provides tips to quit using tobacco products.
Why Quit Using Tobacco?
- You will live a longer and healthier life.
- You will lower your chance of having a heart attack, emphysema, chronic bronchitis, stroke, or cancer.
- Food will taste better.
- Your home, car, clothing, and breath will smell better.
- You will have more stamina.
- You will have less wrinkling/aging of skin.
- It will give you a reason to smile.
Check Your Oral Health
If you use tobacco products, make an appointment with Dr. Angela S. Evanson, DDS for a checkup. Call 720-409-0008, or contact us online. Early detection of oral problems will prevent major issues.
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