From Color to Cancer
Dental professionals, as our Auburn dentists, will encourage the smoker to kick the habit. Teeth show the visible signs of this deadly addiction quite clearly. Cigarettes’ nicotine and tar components attach themselves to tooth surfaces, become sticky and attract food debris and bacteria. They become colonized areas where underneath the decay cavities form, usually in the backs of the teeth and under the gums. Hardened and resistant to routine brushing and flossing, they turn brownish. The decrease saliva flow of smokers is incapable of hydrating the mouth or washing away cigarette debris.
Apart from the yellowish coloring of tooth surfaces and the accompanying undesirable breath, more serious effects of smoking are predictable. Smokers have a higher risk for gingivitis and periodontal disease. Their oral healing capacities are delayed, salivary glands are blocked, and loss of bone in their jaws is hastened. This is not to mention the risk for oral cancer – which may involve the throat, tongue, jaw bone, or floor of the mouth. Not a pretty picture.
Quitting starts now: Dentists of Auburn
Your dentists of Auburn, from the Auburn Avenue Dental Clinic, are a bunch of caring, like-minded professionals towards smoker-patients. Come over for a cleaning and, possibly, a whitening to start you off fresh. Our dentists can give counsel, prescribe some smoking-cessation meds, or recommend support groups or alternative healing; whatever works for you. Routine oral hygiene should still be a must. And, lovingly, though sternly, they will tell you to quit.
