The Impact Of Stress On Your Oral Health

How managing stress helps to prevent damage to teeth & gums

April is Stress Awareness Month, and this year marks 30 years since its inception. It is difficult to say whether life is more stressful now than when the programme first started, but with the combination of recent events in the world, it is hard to imagine that it is not.

Stress will impact all of us at some point in our life. Sometimes this is transitory and passes after an event has occurred, but other times it can be something which we have to deal with and manage for a significant part of our life.

It is well established that stress can have a negative effect on our general health and can contribute to serious issues such as heart attacks. It is probably less well known that it can also have a significant impact on our teeth and gums too, and, in today’s blog, our Canterbury dentistry team explores this, explains the risks and how to prevent or restore damage caused in this way.

Teeth grinding

Perhaps the most obvious and occasionally extreme damage that stress can cause, occurs when we grind our teeth together. This is sometimes referred to as ‘bruxism’ and can range from mild to quite aggressive grinding. Unfortunately, much of this occurs during sleep and therefore makes it hard to control.

The impact it can have will vary depending on the length of time this period lasts and the strength of the grinding. Unfortunately, we have seen a range of the damage that it can cause here at Bradley and Partners Dental & Implant Clinic. Possible issues are general wearing down of the teeth which can expose the dentin layer, meaning the risk of tooth decay is higher. This can also cause teeth to become more sensitive as well.  Severe and powerful grinding can even cause teeth to break or shatter if weak enough. Although this is less common than general wearing of the enamel, it can and does happen.

If you do grind your teeth, you may benefit from wearing a mouthguard at night but, where possible, it is better to try to reduce your stress levels where you can. This may be easier said than done but we will offer a few pieces of advice a little later on.

Tooth decay

Less dramatic than a tooth shattering under the strain of grinding teeth, but the risk of tooth decay is also increased if you are stressed. Not only are we more likely to rush our twice daily brushing of the teeth (presuming we don’t skip it altogether), but stress often causes us to eat unhealthier foods when we ‘comfort eat’. Out go the balanced meals with lots of fruit and vegetables and in come the cakes, biscuits and sweets. As we know, a high intake of sugar is a sure recipe to increase your risk of tooth decay with the often accompanying toothache.

If the stress you are under is also worsened by the fact that you are afraid of going to the dentist, this won’t help the situation and you should always do your best to keep your regular check up appointments at our Canterbury dental practice.

Gum disease

Similarly, gum disease can be caused by long term neglect of our oral health through poor quality, often brief brushing and also by a poor diet. Although fewer people perhaps worry about their gums, gum disease, and especially the more advanced stage of periodontitis, can pose a real risk for your teeth and even result in tooth loss.

Reducing stress levels

Having established that stress can cause significant damage to our teeth and gums, what can we do about it? Some stress can be alleviated by a change in circumstances such as a change in job or partner, but sometimes this is not practical and we may instead have to simply find ways of managing our stress levels. The following are just a few tips which have been found to work for some, but there are lots of tips online and it may be a case of trying a few until you find something that works for you. You should of course seek professional medical help where appropriate.

• Relaxation or meditation
• Walks in the fresh air, preferably in nature and away from noise
• Swimming
• Exercise in general
• Herbal teas

Restoring damaged teeth

If your teeth are already damaged by stress, there are still options available to help you restore them. The treatment needed will depend on the problem, but the wide range of solutions that we have available at Bradley and Partners Dental & Implant Clinic should be able to resolve most problems. The following are some of the possible treatments that we might use, depending on the situation.

• Tooth decay – Fillings, crowns, inlays/onlays, extraction (only as a last resort)
• Worn enamel – cosmetic bonding, veneers
• Broken teeth – fillings, crowns
• Gum disease – scale and polish, root planing

Ultimately, if your teeth have been damaged by stress, you should not let them deteriorate further and should seek professional help and advice from our team of experienced dentists. If you would like to make an appointment at our Canterbury clinic, you can do so by calling us on 01227 463529 and our team will be pleased to help.