How Dental Implants Can be Good for Your Jawbone

When you are missing one or more teeth, it will affect not only your ability to eat, but also the health of your jawbone and face structure, and this can all be corrected with dental implants. As an additional concern, these implants can improve your smile, which will be good for your confidence level and your quality of life overall. 

Missing teeth allow for bone loss

The teeth in your mouth do not just give you something to chew with and make your smile look better; they have other purposes as well. Because each tooth has a root to keep it in place, that root also stimulates and hardens the jawbone. When you lose a tooth, you also lose the root that held it in place, and now you have a lack of nourishment and stimulation to the jawbone, and this allows your jawbone to shrink. 

The loss in your jawbone is gradual, and you may not notice it at first, but over time it is likely to become evident that the appearance in your face and the strength in your jaw has deteriorated. This can lead to changes in your facial appearance, such as wrinkles around your mouth as well as a collapsed mouth and cheeks. If these changes are allowed to continue, they will make you look aged beyond your years. Some people mistakenly think that having dentures or a partial put-in will help, but this only accelerates bone loss even further.

An additional problem to losing your teeth is how it will affect your neighboring teeth by leading to their shifting out of position. Also, the shrinking of the jawbone can cause an even higher risk of cavities and gum disease taking place in and around the surrounding teeth. 

Dental implants act like your natural teeth

When you chew your food, this creates pressure on your jawbone. This pressure travels from the sharp edge of your front teeth or often the surface of your molars down into the root of your teeth and the jawbone. This pressing force that happens whenever you chew your food has the benefit of stimulating your jawbone, and this stimulates the growth of new bone cells. As these new bone cells are stimulated to grow, your jawbone remains stronger and denser. 

The great news about dental implants is that they will also stimulate the growth of new bone cells, and even if you have been without teeth for a while, chewing with these implants embedded in your jaw will bring back some of that lost jawbone tissue. This is because they sit in your mouth like a real tooth, and it is the only form of tooth replacement that can mimic the same stress-producing action that real teeth produce. For this reason, your jawbone remains in a constant state of renewal, and you receive the benefits of a healthier smile and a more symmetrical and younger-looking face. 

Once your dental implants are in, you will be able to take care of them just like you do your natural teeth, and for this reason, you might even forget you ever lost a tooth. Because they stay in permanently, you will continue to look and feel younger all the time. 

Request an appointment here: https://www.thegalleryofsmiles.com or call Midtown Dental - The Gallery of Smiles at (713) 979-4127 for an appointment in our Houston office.

Check out what others are saying about our dental services on Yelp: Dental Implants in Houston, TX.