How Dental Implants Stop The Cascading Effect Of Tooth Loss

Dental implants are a great method for replacing missing teeth that go beyond just improving your cosmetic appeal. If you've lost all the teeth you were at risk to lose and are now looking for teeth replacements, then you should strongly consider dental implants as they're the only tooth replacement method that helps to prevent more tooth loss. Here's how they do it.

Risk of Losing Teeth

There are two critical factors that impact your remaining teeth once you lose even just a single tooth. All two of these increase your risk of losing a tooth.

The first risk is that when you lose a tooth, your gum circulation starts to perform worse than it did before. This is because the teeth help blood to circulate through the gums. Every bite that you take improves circulation and acts almost as like exercise for gums. Without the teeth there, that circulation diminishes, and it can make your gums sick enough with gum disease that surrounding teeth can fall out.

The other reason why you're at a higher risk of losing more teeth than someone who didn't lose a tooth at all is because of the gap between your teeth. Specifically, it's the absence of the tooth that is increasing your risk.

In a similar method to the way that teeth improve circulation in the gums, they also serve a purpose for your jaw bone as well. The pressure travelling through the tooth stimulates bone growth, which in turn means new bone cells to keep your tooth healthy and in-position. But when that pressure transference is lost, surrounding teeth start to lose some of the bone that once supported them, which can increase the risk of their being lost.

How Implants Help

Unlike any other method of tooth replacement, dental implants imitate the way that real teeth work. They have a crown on top and a titanium implant beneath, which acts as the tooth's root. Once this "root" is in place, it performs the same way that a real tooth does, improving gum circulation and building new bone cells. With a dental implant, you can rest assured that you're going to get back to what you once had and won't be at a higher risk of losing more teeth.

Dental implants are perhaps not the greatest method of tooth replacement out there, especially if you want to protect your remaining teeth. Talk to a dentist in your area to learn more about dental implants.