3 Ways That Restorative Dental Services Protect Your Oral Health While Improving Your Smile

While most people think of restorative dentistry as simply performing a cosmetic function, it will protect your oral health as well. Restorative dentistry services combine multiple procedures in order to correct your teeth, such as replacing missing teeth with implants or bridges and ensuring that your teeth are spaced evenly by using braces. Below, you'll find three ways that restorative dentistry can help protect your teeth in addition to improving the appearance of your smile.

1. Maintains the Health of Your Jawbone

The bones in your body constantly undergo a process of self-regeneration, where the skeletal tissue breaks down and rebuilds. In order for this process to occur correctly, the bone needs to be exposed to force. Chewing supplies the required force that your jawbone needs in order to maintain its health.

If you're missing teeth, the pressure of chewing isn't transmitted evenly across your entire jaw, so sections of your jawbone will begin to deteriorate. This can cause your face to take on a shrunken appearance as your jawbone decreases in size. It can also make future dental work much more difficult, as some restorative dentistry options like dental implants require healthy bone tissue in order to successfully integrate into your jawbone.

Replacing your missing teeth through restorative dentistry helps protect the strength of your jawbone. Replacing the lost teeth will transmit pressure evenly across your entire jaw, ensuring that the process of breaking down and rebuilding bone functions correctly.

2. Replacing Missing Teeth Protects Your Natural Teeth

In addition to bone loss, missing teeth will cause excessive pressure to be placed on the adjacent natural teeth. Chewing creates a considerable amount of force, so it's important to spread the force out evenly among multiple teeth. Excessive force causes the enamel covering the tooth to wear down more quickly, and it can even cause your teeth to chip or crack. Replacing your missing teeth with bridges or dental implants will spread the force of chewing around more evenly, which helps prevent your remaining natural teeth from becoming damaged.

3. Makes It Easier to Brush and Floss Properly

If your teeth are crowded together or if two teeth lean towards one another, it may be impossible to reach between your teeth with a toothbrush or with dental floss. This creates a pocket for plaque-causing bacteria to hide in your mouth, which can lead to tooth decay or gum disease. Crooked or crowded teeth are more than a cosmetic issue — they can lead to oral health problems later in life due to the fact that it's difficult to remove bacteria that are hiding between teeth.

Restorative dentistry techniques that include orthodontic appliances like braces can help spread your teeth apart, which allows you to brush and floss between them. Removing plaque-causing bacteria is an important part of maintaining good oral health, and it's only possible if you're able to reach between your teeth with a toothbrush and floss.

As you can see, restorative dental services help protect your overall oral health while improving your smile. You'll protect the health of your jaw, you'll be able to brush and floss properly and you'll protect your remaining natural teeth. If you're missing teeth or if your teeth are crooked or crowded, schedule an appointment at a restorative dentistry clinic in your area to see what procedures will be necessary to correct your smile — in addition to improving the aesthetics of your smile, you'll have better oral health and make it less likely that you'll develop further dental problems in the future.

For more information, contact a dental office like Pacific Ave Dental/Allan L. Hablutzel, DDS.


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