The Negative Effects of Smoking on Oral and Dental Health

This post is especially intended for the teenagers who have just taken up smoking, as for them, smoking is not yet indispensable. It is easier to reverse habits in the beginning periods in teenage years, but for adults these habits have become much stronger and the damage done is even deeper, even if they give up smoking, they will have to deal with the negative effects for some time.

This is why I hope you teens will give up this damaging habit while you can.

Let us discuss some negative effects of smoking:

1-BAD BREATH: A cigarette causes bad breath, while you are smoking it, or even after putting it out. Even when you brush your teeth, the smell is persistent.

Especially the morning breath, a phenomenon that routinely happens, is worse from a smoker’s mouth.

2-STAINED TEETH: Nicotine stains appear on the front or the back surfaces of smokers’ teeth. These stains will not go away if the person has been a smoker for a long while, even after brushing teeth. To make matters worse, household applications to bleach teeth cause scratches on them and make them appear even yellower.

3-GUM PROBLEMS: As smoking causes more tartar and plaques on the dental surface, gum problems are more frequent in smokers and progressing gum problems cause bone loss.

In short; smoking = gum problems.

4-Mouth sores are encountered more frequently by smokers. Canker sores appear more frequently in smokers’ mouths. The recovery from canker sores is delayed as well.

SMOKING CAUSES A DELAY IN THE RECOVERY OF EXISTING WOUNDS, OR THOSE THAT OCCUR LATER: THIS SITUATION APPLIES FOR IMPLANTS OR TOOTH REMOVAL PROCEDURES.

5-The sense of taste is altered by smoking. Smoking has a negative impact on the tasting mechanism on your tongue. Many quitters confess that their taste changes for the better when they quit smoking.

6-They also have a negative effect on the recovery of oral sores. For smokers, the tooth removal wound or a gum treatment heals much slower than those who do not smoke. Due to the narrowing effect of smoking on blood vessels, wound healing is negatively affected.

7-HAIRY TONGUE: That’s right, due to excessive smoking, the structures on your tongue become spoiled and they look just like hairs on your tongue, hence the name “hairy tongue”. It is due to smoking excessively and not brushing your teeth enough and looks extremely gross.

8-LEUCOPLAKIA: Also known as “smoker’s tongue” or “smoker’s patch”, they are white, lace-like, atypical spots on smokers’ tongues and cheeks. They may develop into cancer.

9-ORAL CANCERS: Smoking excessively destroys tongue and cheek tissues and causes oral cancers. As the primary reflection of our health, our teeth have to be with us for cosmetic purposes, if not to help us speak and eat. This is why smoking needs to be given up, for better teeth.

The dangers of SMOKING are not limited to the ones we have discussed. Another damage smoking causes is that if you are a smoker, it is impossible to have your teeth bleached, a popular method of dental therapy worldwide. If you intend to have your teeth bleached, you should never ever smoke during the bleaching procedure. Smoking renders bleaching impossible to perform.

In addition, as excessive smoking causes discoloration behind teeth, it distorts the aesthetically-appealing looks of a person that has undergone composite laminate or porcelain laminate treatments.