CIGARETTES AND ORAL HEALTH
What are the effects?
There are no positive effects on your oral health from smoking tobacco. Cigarette use over prolonged periods of time, and depending on the person, will discolor the teeth, cause bad breath constantly, cause cavities, a hairy tongue, loss of jaw bone matter, alter your sense of smell and taste, cause gum disease, mouth sores, and oral cancer.
Tobacco reduces the blood flow to gums, which deprives them of enough oxygen and nutrients to be healthy. They’ll become much more vulnerable to bacterial infections. Because cigarettes slow down your body’s ability to heal wounds and fight off infections, it is not uncommon for smokers to experience getting sores in their mouths, as well as cavities, which can lead more easily to infections below the gums called abscesses. These can be very painful and must be treated by a dentist, who will likely perform a root canal or tooth extraction, depending on how bad the tooth decay is.
So, what to do about it? The best thing to do is to QUIT. The positive effects on your oral health will be profound. Quitting can be very difficult, and this is understood- but it is not impossible. There are mainly two ways of quitting, which are tapering off, or going cold turkey. Here are some tips if you are thinking about quitting cigarettes:
- Space your your cigarettes. Start your first one an hour later than normal.
- Delay your next cigarette by 10-15 minutes. It helps you become in control.
- Drink water with ice, it helps flush nicotine from your system faster!
- Do something different when you want to smoke, and remove yourself from a place that you can smoke in.
