The Connection between Oral Health and Mental Well-Being

Our Southlake, Texas dentists, we care about the connection between oral health and overall health. This connection is hard to avoid when conditions like gum disease can have such a profound impact on your heart, your metabolism, and your brain. Any oral infection, however, including an infected tooth, can significantly impact your health, potentially leading to deadly sinus infections and sepsis. 

However, we don’t talk as often about the strong connections between oral health and mental well-being. Good oral health can make you happier and more confident and help you maintain your mental acuity as you age. At StarImage Dental Boutique & Oral Surgery, we can help you maintain your oral health in ways that promote mental well-being.

Smiling Makes You Happier

We all know that when we’re happy, we smile, but the truth is more complicated than that. The link between smiling and happiness is more of a two-way street. We smile because we’re happy, but the brain also reads feedback from the smiling muscles to reinforce our happiness. 

When you have a smile that you love to share, this can encourage you to smile more. When someone smiles at you, you naturally smile back and get a boost of happiness. When you hear a joke or see a meme that you think is funny, it can make you smile, and you get another happiness boost. Even putting on a fake smile for a Zoom can boost your happiness. 

However, the effect can be the opposite if you’re uncomfortable with your smile. When you suppress your smile in public, it can reinforce negative emotions, leading you to feel grumpier and sadder all day long. 

An attractive smile that makes you feel comfortable showing off can lead to more smiling and better moods.

The Confidence to Engage with People

Another important aspect of maintaining mental well-being is having regular social interactions. Poor oral health can keep you from having these interactions. 

If you’re not confident in your smile, it can make you avoid conversations with people when they might see your teeth. In addition, if you have bad breath related to gum disease, an infected tooth, or poor oral hygiene, you might want to avoid being around people. At first, you might be less inclined to talk with people you meet casually in the halls at work or the gym. Later, it might get so far as to make you give up on dating or other social activities altogether because you don’t want people to see your teeth. The result can be increased isolation and feelings of loneliness. 

If poor oral health makes you avoid social interactions, StarImage Dental Boutique & Oral Surgery can help with cosmetic dentistry.

Chronic Pain Leads to Depression

So far, we’ve been focused on how the appearance of your teeth and other aspects of your smile can affect your mood, but another important aspect of oral health can impact your well-being: pain. People with chronic pain are more likely to experience a low mood, even depression. 

Unfortunately, chronic pain is a fact of life for about one in five US adults. There are three common sources of pain related to oral health: cavities, gum disease, and temporomandibular joint disorders (TMJ/TMD). 

Cavities occur when acid excreted by oral bacteria creates holes in your teeth. These can cause sensitivity to temperature, pressure, and sweets. If the cavity breaks into the tooth’s interior, bacteria can infect the tooth, known as an infected or abscessed tooth. An infected tooth can cause severe chronic pain. 

Gum disease can expose the sensitive roots of your teeth. This can make your teeth sensitive as with cavities. In addition, infected gums can be tender and painful. 

Finally, TMJ is a pain condition that affects most adults at one point or another. A much smaller proportion of people experience chronic TMJ, but for these adults, the mental health consequences can be severe, including depression and anxiety. 

If you’re suffering from chronic pain, don’t just keep suffering. Contact a dentist who can help eliminate your discomfort.

Eating Better Leads to Feeling Better

We all know that eating a healthy diet can significantly improve our mood. Breaking out of the rise-and-crash cycle of sugar and caffeine can help you have better days, and supplying your body with the nutrients it needs will boost your mood, in part because it makes it easier for you to exercise. It also feels good to eat a variety of tasty food. 

Unfortunately, poor oral health can make it hard for you to eat nutritious foods. If you have cavities and gum disease, you might avoid foods that are hard to chew. TMJ can also make you skip hard-to-chew foods like fresh fruits and vegetables because of soreness in your jaw muscles and joints. Traditional dentures, too, can make you give up foods that are hard to chew. Instead, you may stick to processed foods or limit your diet to a few foods you know you can eat without pain. Eating a lot of processed foods is not only bad for your overall health, it can contribute to depression. 

At StarImage Dental Boutique & Oral Surgery, we can remove barriers to eating by eliminating discomfort from tooth decay, gum disease, and TMJ. We can also help you get a functional bite and replace traditional dentures with dental implants that restore your ability to bite and chew normally.

Chewing Helps Maintain Mental Acuity

Not just food nutrition matters: chewing can make a difference, too. Studies show that chewing is connected to cognitive function and can improve many aspects of brain function, including memory, processing, alertness, and attention. 

Chewing impacts the brain by stimulating blood flow through the brain, improving the function of cognitive regions while you’re chewing. 

We discussed the above situations where people might give up chewing: cavities, gum disease, TMJ, and having teeth replaced by dentures. All of these risks increase with age, at precisely the time when people are at a greater risk of cognitive decline. This makes improving chewing a valuable tactic to help stave off cognitive decline. In particular, replacing poorly functioning dentures with dental implants can significantly improve chewing.

Improve Your Oral Health for Better Mental Well-Being

Is poor oral health negatively impacting your mental well-being? StarImage Dental Boutique & Oral Surgery can help. From basic preventive dentistry to cosmetic dentistry to dental implant surgery, we offer a full range of services to improve oral and mental health. 

To learn how we can help you, please call (817) 587-4566 or use our online form today to request an appointment at StarImage Dental Boutique & Oral Surgery in Southlake, Texas.