Without a doubt, gum disease greatly affects your gums over time. That’s only natural – the condition does direct damage to your gum tissue. But did you know gum disease can also affect facial shape? As it progresses, this ailment will often make your face seem haggard, old, and worn out. If you’d like to learn more, you’re in luck; just read the summary below from your local Jersey City dentist!
Remind Me: What’s Gum Disease?
To grasp its impact on facial shape, you’ll first need to know gum disease’s basics. Doing so will provide you with crucial contextual details.
Gum disease (per its name) is an infection of your gums – the soft, pink tissues around your teeth. As such, it occurs when excess plaque gathers in your mouth from poor eating, bad hygiene, and so on. The condition starts as gingivitis (i.e., minor gum inflammation), but quickly turns into harmful periodontitis (i.e., a full-blown gum infection) when left untreated.
Notably, gum disease is only reversible in its first phase. Dental therapies merely manage the condition once it progresses to periodontitis.
How Does It Impact Facial Shape?
Given enough time, untreated gum disease makes your face’s shape degrade. This degradation will then cause you to look older and more weathered.
Note that gum disease can cause tooth loss. As the infection erodes gum and jaw tissues, it deprives your teeth of support until they fall out. This process causes your jawbone to shrink, eventually prompting facial collapse – a condition that leaves your face looking sunken and hollow.
While it isn’t that hard to replace lost teeth, fixing a shrunken jaw is tricky. Treatment for the latter issue can require invasive bone grafts.
Ways to Prevent (or Manage) Gum Disease
Rather than let it cause facial collapse, you ought to prevent (or manage) gum disease. That means you should do the following:
- Keep Your Mouth Clean – Since twice-daily brushing and once-daily flossing remove plaque from your smile, they drastically reduce your risk of gum disease.
- Eat Mouth-Healthy Foods – Try to avoid sticky and sugary foods, as they cling to teeth and cause plaque to build up. Instead, have mouth-healthy alternatives like lean proteins, leafy greens, and crisp fruits.
- See Your Dentist Often – When you get dental checkups at least every six months, your dentist has a chance to remove plaque that’d otherwise trigger gum disease.
Though gum disease can affect facial shape, you still have power over your circumstances. Use the tips above (and consult your dental provider) to keep infected gums from causing a collapse.
About the Practice
AV Dental Associates of Jersey City is based in Jersey City, NJ. Led by Drs. Vahid and Jenn, our practice does its utmost to give your smile enduring health and beauty. We thus offer preventive, cosmetic, and restorative oral services, all tailored to your mouth’s unique needs. Our team is also ready and able to treat dental emergencies on short notice! For more details or to book a visit, please contact us on our website or by phone at (201)-484-7759.