Eating a lot of sticky food, not brushing every day, and not visiting your dentist every six months can ruin the look of your teeth and cause multiple dental health problems.
Your teeth can turn yellow and the protective, transparent layer – known as enamel – around them can decay, leaving the teeth vulnerable to more bacterial attacks and further deterioration.
The ill-effects of poor dental care do not confine themselves to your mouth. In fact, they can affect your overall health.
Healthy Mouth, Healthy You!
The mouth-body connection is not an urban myth.
The phrase “Healthy Mouth, Healthy You” is backed by scientific evidence.
Research shows that good care of your teeth can boost your self-esteem and confidence, lower the risk of heart disease, sharpen your memory, reduce inflammation risk, stabilize blood sugar, and help women carry their baby to term.
It can also reduce the frequency and intensity of headaches.
Headaches and Dental Health:
At first glance, any connection between headaches and dental health appears rather tenuous, but it is not.
Headaches are one of the most common medical complaints and one of the most common symptoms of temporomandibular joint disease (TMJ), a medical condition of the jaws.
If you have been diagnosed with TMJ, you very likely suffer from regular headaches. It is also true the other way: if frequent headaches are your problem, you may have TMJ.
TMJ is not the only link between dental health and headaches.
Other problems in your teeth and jaws can cause either a tension headache – the milder, more common form of two types of headaches – or a migraine.
Two common conditions that lead to pain in your head are:
Tooth Abscess:
The innards of your teeth are known as pulp. Sometimes, the pulp can get infected.
You can experience an intense ache in your head and face if the infected pulp belongs to your upper teeth.
A common treatment for an abscess is endodontic treatment. Your dentist may choose to combine the treatment with antibiotics, or pick a different therapy altogether.
Post-Extraction Infection:
Sometimes one or more of your teeth can deteriorate so much that your dentist will have no other option but to remove them.
Once a tooth is removed from its socket, the underlying bone becomes susceptible to infection.
Though dentists take care to reduce the risk, it is not unheard of for a small number of patients to report an infection within 10 days of tooth extraction.
The infection starts off as mild pain in the bone but then expands to your face, temple, and neck.
Taking good care of your mouth goes hand-in-hand with taking good care of your body.
Poor dental health affects you in several ways, headaches being one of them.
Several conditions of teeth and jaws can trigger headaches. In such situations, it is best to consult a dentist.
If you live in San Diego, you can speak to us at Irresistible Smiles now by calling (619) 656-6785. We offer a highly experienced and qualified dental team for dental conditions.