Tobacco Effects On Oral Health

Everyone knows that smoking and chewing tobacco is bad for your health, but does everyone know exactly why they are bad. There is a great deal of things that tobacco does to the body and it all starts in the mouth. As many people know, smoking causes bad breath and tooth staining, but there are other effects that smoking and smokeless tobacco has on oral health. Dry mouth, periodontal disease, and oral cancer are some of the things that tobacco can cause in the oral cavity. Dry mouth, also known as xerostomia, is the result of having decreased amounts of saliva being produced by the salivary glands. It may not seem like a very pressing issue to have, but there are several roles that saliva has in the oral cavity. Not only does it keep the

More than one-half of periodontal cases are said to be smokers. Periodontal disease is a disease that is in your gums caused by bacteria that finds its way into the gum tissue and causes an infection. It can also affect the bone that keeps your teeth into place. By smoking cigarettes and chewing tobacco, the chemicals start to make the gums recede and cause pockets in between the gum and the tooth. Therefore, making it easier for particles to get down into those pockets and cause an infection. People who smoke have a much bigger risk at getting periodontal disease. Tobacco products also cause your gums or any other surface in your mouth to take longer to heal. That is caused because smoking will inhibit the growth of blood vessels. Therefore, less blood flow to the area. This means it is less likely that treatment will be successful. Smokers and tobacco users normally will lose their teeth before people who do not smoke. Since bone loss is more prevalent in people who smoke, it is normal that surgical procedures will fail. An example would be dental implants. The implants would not be able to keep a hold in the bone if it continued to recede. Other treatments such as crowns and bridges, sealants, and laminates would work fine for only a certain amount of time then the chemicals from the tobacco would ruin the hardware. Periodontal disease cannot be completely cured, but it can be

Products such as cigarettes, chewing tobacco, cigars, and pipes all contain toxins, nicotine, and carcinogens. Carcinogens are cancer causing agents. Cigarettes are the most common tobacco product used today and contain 60 cancer causing agents. Cigars are looked at as the least harmful tobacco product, but even though cigars are not inhaled, it puts the smoker at risk for cancer in the oral cavity and on the lips. Surprisingly, cigars contain more tobacco than cigarettes. Chewing tobacco is also very harmful because it is put between the teeth and the gum, causing it to be in direct contact with the tissue. Therefore, the toxic chemicals such as nicotine and the carcinogens are ingested into the body. Smokeless tobacco products contain 28 or more cancer causing agents. Cancer in the lips, gums, and cheek are most common with this form of tobacco use. Leukoplakia is the beginning stages of oral cancer. It is described as a thick, white rough patch somewhere in the oral cavity. Depending on what stage the cancer has developed to, there are ways of treating it. Some examples would be surgery, radiation therapy, and chemotherapy. Removing the tumor, skin grafts, dental implants, removing teeth, part of the jaw, and lymph nodes are all techniques used of removing the cancerous area surgically. In the early stages, radiation therapy could be used to treat small tumors. Chemotherapy is