How Dental Implants Can Save Your Smile

A hand throwing a life preserver out to drowning people. Just like how that life preserver is going to save their lives, a dental implant can save your smile

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Like crow’s feet, sun spots, or just about any other bodily mark that comes with old age, losing one or more teeth can be embarrassing. More so than laugh lines, however, tooth loss can hit us hard. Every time we eat, we’re constantly reminded of our missing tooth, and if our lost tooth was surrounded by other teeth, our smiles can quickly become misaligned. This is because when a gap forms, our teeth naturally readjust or “lean” into the gap to provide coverage, and this can create even more unseemly gaps.

 

Missing Teeth and Our Smile

Smiles are important to us. They affect how others see us and they can affect how we see ourselves. Losing teeth can not only leave unseemly gaps, it can also change the structure of our face. Our jaws work pretty dang hard. An average human jaw can exert around 200 pounds per square inch, and around the molars, they have a force of over 260 PSI. To deal with the normal wear and tear of eating, our body uses stem cells to regenerate muscle and bone tissue. What activates this process is stimulation in the jaw. If teeth go missing, this stimulation stops, and the body stops regenerating bone mass around that area. Over time, with the loss of more and more bone matter, this can cause a “sunken” look in our cheeks, and can put the structure of our smiles in danger. Lucky, tooth replacement methods like dental implants can reverse this process.

What Are Dental Implants?

Dental implants are essentially an anchor that has been surgically implanted into your jaw to support a dental crown or bridge. Generally comprised of titanium, these anchors will then begin to fuse with muscle tissue and bone matter in a process known as osseointegration. After this process completes itself, the titanium anchor will function much like a natural tooth root, and will be ready for a custom-made restoration which will serve as a permanent tooth replacement. The material for crowns or bridges is impact resistant, stain-resistant, and will match the shade of your other teeth, making it virtually impossible to detect.

The nature of dental implants make them a very effective tooth replacement option. Because they have a “root,” dental implants can provide the jaw with enough stimulation to encourage bone regeneration, reverse any bone loss that may have occurred. Bonus: they also function as a regular tooth, requiring no special cleaning beyond regular oral hygiene habits like brushing and flossing.

 

Are Dental Implants Right for You?

Dental implants have been used across the country as a tooth replacement method for decades. According to the American Academy of Implant Dentistry (AAID), over five hundred thousand adults have received the treatment, and the success rate has proved to be around 98-percent, when patients practice oral hygiene. That being said, in order to determine whether dental implants are right for your smile, scheduling an appointment is best. There, you and your dentist can discuss your personal medical history and decide whether to pursue treatment.

Do you want to learn more about dental implants in Westchester County? Please call today for an appointment with implant dentist Dr. George Sepiashvili and Dr. Wanda Mejia at our office by Mohegan Lake, NY.

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