Is It Important to Replace Missing Teeth?

If you have one or more missing teeth, you may wonder if that is negatively affecting your oral health. The truth is that missing teeth do affect your oral health. When you are missing teeth, you cannot chew your food properly, and your jaw bone doesn’t receive the proper amount of stimulation in the areas where you have missing teeth. This can result in a loss of bone density in your jaw. In order to prevent this, our dentist in Los Angels recommends getting missing teeth replaced as soon as possible.

Bone Loss

Eat time you eat and chew food, pressure is evenly distributed across all your teeth. This stimulates the jaw and prevents absorption of the bone by your body. When you have one or more missing teeth, the pressure across your jaw is not evenly distributed, and the sections where you are missing teeth are not stimulated at all. This can cause your body to think that you do not need your jaw bone in that area, and over time, the density will decrease, which can lead to long-term oral health problems. Replacing missing teeth with dental implants, bridges and partial for full dentures helps prevent this problem.

Problems Chewing Food

You may have problems chewing your food if you have several teeth missing. You may even start to avoid certain foods because they are difficult or impossible to chew. This can lead to vitamin and mineral deficiencies, which can not only affect your oral health but your overall health. In order to ensure you can chew your food properly and eat a wide variety of vitamin and mineral dense foods, our dentist recommends getting your missing teeth replaced as soon as possible.

Facial Shape Problems

Your teeth help define how your face is shaped. When you are missing several teeth, especially at the front of your mouth, it can make your face appear sunken and cause your lips to pull inward toward your mouth. If you also have bone loss in your lower jaw, your chin may even appear misshapen. By replacing your missing teeth with implants or partial dentures, you can maintain your face shape, which helps improve your appearance.

Our dentist in Los Angels, Dr. Arman Torbati, can examine your mouth, jaw and remaining teeth to determine which type of tooth replacement is right for you. To schedule an initial consultation, give us a call at 310-553-3428.