Keeping Your Jaw And Teeth Healthy With Dental Implants

If you are missing a tooth, or more than one, you have the option of having removable dentures or a permanent dental implant. Removable dentures consist of false teeth arranged on a metal and/or plastic piece that fits into your mouth, often anchoring around your own teeth. Dental implants have a false tooth crown that is basically screwed onto a metal post that has been implanted into your jawbone. Dentures will give you the appearance of having all your teeth and allow you to eat and speak normally. Dental implants do all that but have the added benefit of keeping the other teeth in your mouth healthy as well as saving your jawbone. Here are a few ways they accomplish these benefits.

Saving the Jawbone

The jawbone needs regular stimulation to prevent it from disintegrating. Dentures that sit on the soft gum tissue in your mouth do not give the proper stimulation to prevent bone loss. The posts that are inserted into the actual bone do. As you talk, chew, or clench your jaw the implanted posts stimulate the bone to continually rebuild itself. This keeps the bone strong and healthy. If the bone is allowed to disintegrate, over time your jawline will change and become weak. Your ability to chew and speak will be affected. In addition, because of the change to your jawbone, removable dentures will not keep the perfect fit they had when you first got them.

Saving Other Teeth

Keeping your jawbone healthy ensures that more teeth are not lost because there is not enough bone to hold them in place. Implants also allow for better daily brushing and flossing of the teeth to keep them from developing cavities. In addition, since there is not a piece of metal and/or plastic inside the mouth there is nothing for food particles to get trapped under between brushings. Food particles may also become lodged under dentures, allowing them to decay and cause gum disease or affect nearby natural teeth. Finally, the denture parts that attach to your natural teeth can scrape away the enamel of the teeth providing a way for bacteria to enter the tooth and start to break it down.

Talk with a dentist, like one from Dental Services Of Rochester, about the benefits of dental implants and ask if you are a good candidate for them. It is important that you have the implants as soon as possible so there any bone loss is not going to keep you from getting them.

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