Understanding What Affects the Health of Your Smile
The health of your smile plays an integral role in your overall health. While it’s essential that you maintain healthy oral hygiene habits, you can better protect your smile if you know what negatively affects it.
Conditions That Affect Your Oral Health
While your diet plays a significant role in your oral health, multiple medical conditions can affect your smile as well, including:
- Diabetes: If you have diabetes, you’re more likely to suffer from gum disease because it reduces your body’s resistance to infection.
- Alzheimer’s Disease: As the disease progresses, patients’ oral health worsens.
- Eating Disorders: Eating disorders limit the nutrients that your body and smile receive. Additionally, patients who have bulimia typically engage in self-induced vomiting, which continuously covers teeth with acid from the stomach.
- Osteoporosis: This disease makes your bones weak and brittle, and it can be linked to tooth loss.
- Rheumatoid Arthritis: RA (rheumatoid arthritis) causes severe inflammation, and it can affect your TMJ (temporomandibular joint), making opening and closing your mouth difficult.
- Sjogren’s syndrome: Inflammation blocks the salivary glands, causing severe dry mouth which can cause more cavities.
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