Your smile is precious. It’s a great social and professional asset, and it’s the only one you’ve got. Unfortunately, it’s also vulnerable to many potential risks.
But the good news is that no matter what may have ruined your smile–we can help you get it back with a full mouth reconstruction. We want you to know that we won’t chastise or shame you for the damage to your smile — we’re not concerned with the cause of damage, only the cure.
Poor Oral Hygiene
One of the most common reasons why people experience damage to their smile is that they don’t take proper care of it. If you neglect to care for your teeth, you can experience a combination of tooth decay and gum disease. This may seriously damage several of your teeth, or it may even lead to the loss of one or more teeth.
Fortunately, dental crowns and tooth-colored dental fillings can take care of damaged teeth. And lost teeth can be replaced with dental implants.
Failure to Wear a Mouthguard
Whenever participating in highly energetic sports, it’s important to wear a mouthguard. You may not think the sport is supposed to be contact, but you can always collide accidentally with another player, an obstacle, or the ground. Failure to wear a mouthguard can lead to chipped teeth, broken teeth, and even knocked-out teeth.
Porcelain veneers are a great treatment for chipped teeth. Teeth that have been more seriously damaged may require crowns or dental implants.Grinding Teeth
Grinding teeth is often a stress-related behavior. The more your worries hang over you, the more you grind your teeth. Other people, though, may grind their teeth simply because of an imbalance in their jaw that may be related to TMJ.
No matter what the cause of your grinding, we can help using a bite splint that protects your teeth from damage. If you also have TMJ, we might also use the splint to hold your jaws in a more comfortable position so that you’ll be less likely to grind your teeth.
Smoking
Smoking is one of the worst things you can do to your teeth. Not only does it stain your teeth and gums, but it can increase your risk of gum disease and tooth loss. It can even make it harder for you to replace teeth with dental implants.
Teeth whitening can sometimes help with smoking-related stains, but they may require porcelain veneers to really fix. Replacing lost teeth with implants may not be advised. We may recommend a bridge or denture instead.
Damaging Behaviors
Although smoking may be the worst thing you can do to you teeth, it’s not the only way your everyday habits are bad for your teeth. If you have a tendency to open bottles or packages with your teeth, snip cloth, plastic, or thread with your teeth, then you may be damaging them. The damage might not be apparent at first, but will show up over time.
Eating Disorders
Eating disorders are very bad for teeth. Purging behavior related to bulimia nervosa is particularly damaging because it exposes your teeth to damaging acid on a regular basis. The erosion of many teeth simultaneously can lead to the need for many reconstructive procedures all at once.
Low-Quality Dentistry
Of course, it’s not only you that might ruin your smile. Sometimes it’s someone who was supposed to be helping it. Many dentists are not really qualified to perform cosmetic dentistry–they lack experience, education, and skill–and so may leave you with a smile that looked worse than before. Poorly fitting and poorly matched restorations can make your smile very unattractive.
Fortunately, there are ways that your smile can be made beautiful again. Our dentists are some of the pioneers in cosmetic and reconstructive dentistry, and they can help you get back a smile that you will love. To learn how we can help you, please call (843) 706-2999 for an appointment with a Hilton Head cosmetic dentist at Beyond Exceptional Dentistry.
