Smoking and Oral Health

Published Jan 07 2010

Smoking causes more health problems than just lung cancer and cardiovascular disease. It can also destroy your mouth.

On the lighter end of the scale, smoking causes things like bad breath and tooth discoloration (anywhere from yellow to dark brown), which are annoyances requiring a lot of time and/or money to reverse.

But according to WebMD.com, the detrimental effects to your mouth caused by smoking can get much worse. It increases the buildup of plaque and tartar, causing tooth decay and cavities.

WebMD.com also says that smoking causes you to lose bone density within the jaw, which leads to tooth loss. If the jaw has less density, it isn’t able to anchor the teeth as well. This also causes low success rates for dental implant procedures, because the jaw density isn’t stable enough to hold the implants. A history of smoking also impedes the healing process of any surgery, because the body’s defenses are low.

People usually don’t think about this type of cancer nearly as much as lung cancer in relation to smoking, but oral cancer is another oral risk with smoking. Dentalhealthsite.com says that smokers comprise almost 90 percent of all oral cancer patients.

Smoking can also cause leukoplakia, which means thick, white patches develop in various places inside your mouth. The Mayo Clinic says this condition usually is more annoying than dangerous, but some patches show signs of early cancer.

Perio.org cites a study published in the Journal of Periodontology saying that more than half of the periodontal disease among adults in America is caused by smoking. Gum disease causes tooth loss, because the decay eats away at the gums and the base of the tooth, causing less of a connection to the jaw until it simply eats it away, WebMD.com says. Smoking affects the function of gum tissue cells, interfering with the attachment of bone and soft tissue in the mouth. This not only causes less blood flow to the gums, the site says, but also makes smokers more susceptible to infection.

Smoking, and the use of other nonsmoking tobacco products, can destroy the mouth in many ways, and it is not just limited to aesthetics. The use of tobacco can cause serious oral problems that could damage other parts of the body as well.