Approximately 15 million people smoke in Turkey, corresponding to 23% of the total population. You won't believe it, but it has been determined that approximately 130 million cigarettes are smoked per day. Although this number is slowly decreasing, the number of people at risk due to smoking is also quite high.
What does smoking do to your teeth? Tobacco damages your teeth in many areas. Smoking reduces your mouth's ability to fight infections; This leaves you vulnerable to bacteria caused by smoking. When your mouth cannot fight it, dental plaque and bacteria take over the environment.
Increased plaque and bacteria cause many problems in oral health:
Tooth discoloration:
Yellowed or stained teeth are the most visible dental problems of smokers. The chemicals in tobacco attach to tooth enamel and cause it to stain over time. Although teeth whitening treatments help slow down this process, it becomes impossible to completely stop the yellowing of your teeth if you continue to smoke.
Bad breath:
The saying "You smell like an ashtray" actually refers to smokers. It describes very well the state of your breathing. After smoking, cigarette particles remain in the mouth for a long time, which causes your breath to carry the cigarette smell.
In addition, the long-term effects of smoking also affect bad breath. Bacteria that form in a smoker's mouth in higher than normal numbers cause bad breath. Unfortunately, frequent tooth brushing and gargling do not help eliminate bad breath because the odor is caused by unhealthy gums, oral sores, and decay. The only way to get rid of all these problems completely is to quit smoking completely and solve the existing problems together with your dentist.
Prolonged smoking also causes inflammation of the salivary glands; This causes painful swelling on the face and may require an operation if salivary gland stones have formed.
Gum Diseases
Smokers are twice as likely to suffer from gum disease. They tend to. This risk increases with every cigarette you smoke, and if you continue to use it, you will not get results from the treatments.
So why? Smoking reduces your mouth's ability to fight bacteria and allows them to settle and multiply on both your teeth and gums. If left untreated, gums can pull away from the teeth and weaken the tooth roots. The most serious form of this is periodontitis. Periodontitis is when the bones and tissues that hold the tooth in place are damaged, eventually causing the tooth to be lost.
Tooth loss is a condition that can occur in smokers because their mouths never have enough time to heal. Smoking also prevents treatments against gum diseases such as brushing, flossing, mouth rinsing and tartar removal from being effective.
Prolonged treatment processes
Unfortunately, the bad news for smokers does not end here.
Smoking not only causes consequences such as tooth loss and the need for surgery, but also causes delays in the results of treatment processes. Smoking also affects the success rate of dental implant treatments.
The longer your mouth is vulnerable to these threats, the more likely it is to develop further complications. A dentist will do the necessary work to reduce these effects as much as possible, but quitting smoking will be the best collaboration for the treatment process.
Oral cancer:
The worst consequence of smoking is oral cancer. According to World Health Organization data, 40 thousand people are diagnosed with oral cancer every year and unfortunately 12 thousand people die from the disease. It is estimated that approximately 80% of diagnosed patients are smokers. This risk increases when smoking is combined with heavy alcohol intake.
Oral cancer can be detected by white or red sores in the mouth, difficulty in chewing and swallowing, numbness in the jaw and even earache. These symptoms may be caused by different reasons, but people who have these symptoms for more than two weeks should definitely be checked by a doctor. We should not forget that the earlier cancer is detected, the more effective the treatment is.
Conclusion
Mention before As we have seen, your dentist will provide the necessary treatments to resolve the conditions associated with smoking, but the only way to completely get rid of these conditions is to quit smoking. Considering that the mouth is not the only part of our body that smoking affects, the healthiest solution would be to make every effort to stay away from smoking.
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