When it comes to lost teeth, you may think you only need prosthetics for the visible gaps. Why replace a tooth no one can see, admire, or enjoy? However, the truth is that you should quickly replace any missing molars with quality dental implants. Treatment would prevent a whole host of oral problems, ensuring your smile remains strong and stable. If you’d like the details, keep reading – your Arlington dentist will gladly share more!
Missing Molars Cause Problems
While a missing back tooth isn’t instantly apparent, it can still cause serious issues for your mouth. The most common of these are:
Eating Troubles
You may not have known, but molars are some of the most crucial teeth for eating. They allow you to grind food into digestible pieces, which provide your body with vital nutrients. Missing even one of them will make your meals tougher, as you’ll find it hard to break down your bites.
Facial Collapse
Visible or not, teeth stimulate and maintain your jawbone through chewing. That means they keep your face looking full, firm, and vibrant over time. Lacking a molar or two will weaken your bite force, depriving your jaw of the stimulus it needs to preserve itself. The result would be facial collapse – a condition that makes your face seem old, saggy, and wrinkled.
A Crooked Grin
A smile gap isn’t just a problem when it’s highly visible. Left unchecked, this space can exert force and slowly shift nearby teeth towards itself. This process will then make your whole grin crooked and misaligned, prompting many orthodontic issues. It can even cause remaining teeth to fall out if it goes on long enough.
Replace Your Molar with a Dental Implant
With all that said, there’s still good news. A well-placed dental implant solves problems like those above.
Don’t forget that implant posts actively fuse with your jaw. Because they do so, they restore your bite force and help you chew tough foods. Their fusion also ensures they stimulate your jawbone, preserving its tissue enough to prevent facial collapse. Fully-fused implants stop other teeth from tilting as well, so they keep your smile straight and aligned. Best of all is that such effects last a long time; dental implants can work for decades with proper care.
Clearly, there are good reasons to replace a tooth no one can see. Keep that in mind as you look into a possible implant treatment.
About the Practice
We Smile Dental of Arlington is based in Arlington, TX. Led by Dr. Atluri, our practice makes dentistry as smooth and effective as possible for patients. We’ll always tailor your care to your smile’s needs, whether you receive preventive, cosmetic, or even restorative treatment(s). Our team can even place dental implants in-house, ensuring the process is convenient and accessible. For more details or to book a visit, please contact us on our website or by phone at (682)-452-1150.