Has Stress Ruined Your Smile? Find Relief with a Smile Makeover

Stomachaches, headaches, weight gain, wrinkles, gray hair, sleep loss – stress is dangerous and damaging to your entire body, internally and externally. Your teeth and gums are no exception, and your oral health could be completely out of whack if worry, strain, and anxiety have taken their toll. Cosmetic and restorative dentistry treatments can give you a smile makeover that helps you get a pain-free, beautiful smile again, and at least ease some of your stress.

Stress-Induced Oral Health Problems

Knowing that your teeth are in bad shape can add to any stress you’re experiencing. You worry about how you look, or you suffer with constant tooth and mouth pain. These problems can be overcome.

By developing an awareness of your habits and acknowledging that you need dental care, you can at least minimize the stress that your mouth is experiencing and the side effects that come from a body under stress.

Do any of the following apply to you?

• Grind your teeth: Stress can have its way with you while you sleep. If you unconsciously grind and clench your teeth at night, you’re not only putting yourself in danger of broken teeth, gum recession, and worn tooth enamel, you could suffer aching jaw pain, facial soreness, tenderness, and headaches. Invisalign can correct misalignment and help prevent TMJ problems and subsequent grinding and clenching.
• Chew on things: You unconsciously crush ice with your teeth, chew on a pencil, or bite your nails. When you take out your stress on things using your teeth, you can break tooth enamel or damage existing dental work. Porcelain crowns or dental onlays are often necessary to correct damaged teeth.
• Poor saliva production: Feel like you always have a dry mouth? Stress can do that to you. And if you’re taking medication to help combat your anxiety, dry mouth could be a side effect. When you aren’t producing enough saliva, your mouth isn’t moist enough to wash away bacteria and food particles. So even with good brushing and flossing measures, you’re far more susceptible to decay settling in. Sealants may help.
• Feel unwell: Stress can make you physically ill by causing stomach pain and headaches and oral health problems, but it can also attack your immune system. When your immunity is low, you will feel run down and are far more susceptible to colds and infections – any health problem can manifest in your mouth and wreak havoc there too as well as on the rest of your body.
• Don’t take care of your teeth: Sometimes the worry that you experience daily gets in the way of your typical self-care measures. You may be so overcome by emotions that you neglect to brush your teeth at least twice a day and floss at least once a day. You may skip your biannual dental visits. You may leave yourself open to oral health problems because teeth are simply not a priority.

Overcoming Dental Anxiety

Some people have poor oral health not because of stress but because of a phobia about the dentist, and this is its own kind of worry. Fearing the sounds, sights, smells, or simply the atmosphere of the dentist is enough to make some people stay home, and that just means their teeth will fall into greater and greater disrepair and cause pain and discomfort.

Don’t stress about the dentist. If you have dental anxiety, let us know about your concerns so we can make your smile makeover visit to our office even easier. Schedule an appointment with Haymarket dentist Dr. Sina Reangber.