How does your Lifestyle Affect your Mouth Health?

Your lifestyle dictates a lot for your health. The same applies for your oral health too. Oral care depends largely on some good oral hygiene habits that you need to inculcate in your daily routine in order to achieve the best results. These habits are a part of your lifestyle. An unscrupulous lifestyle on the other hand, hampers your dental as well as oral health. The most fatal habits for hampering your oral health are: smoking, chewing tobacco or simply incessant grinding of your teeth.

Some statistical evidence of how tobacco affects your oral health goes like:

• • • 90 percent of the people who suffer from mouth cancer, throat cancer and ailments of the like have been habituated to tobacco consumption for some considerable amount of time.
    • Smokers as compared to non-smokers, are six times more likely to develop such cancers.
    • It has been found that about 37 percent of the smokers continue smoking even after they are done with their cancer treatment. These individuals are prone to developing a second cancer, such as that of the throat and the larynx. However, the probability of developing a second cancer is still low. Only abut 6 percent have been found to be the victims.

Now let us concentrate on how your day-to-day activities affect your overall oral health.

The Use of Certain Medications

Certain drugs like some heart medicines, oral contraceptives, anti-depressants, might affect your oral health. In case you are faced with oral problems and you visit your dental care provider, inform him or her about the same as it is important for your dentist to know on what medications you have been put on by other doctors.

Teeth Grinding or Clenching

Often, teeth grinding is unconscious. Many people are in the habit of clenching their teeth at night while at sleep. Continual grinding of the teeth against each other puts unnecessary pressure on the surrounding gum tissues as well as the jaw bones. This might culminate into an acute jaw pain or even TMJ (Temporomandibular jaw ) issues.

Stress or Anxiety

An ample number of health complications are related to stress. It may be the causal factor for conditions like hypertension, headaches or even cancer. This factor also stands responsible for periodontal diseases. Moreover, anxiety makes it difficult for the body to fight any infection. Therefore, even a periodontal disease does not seem to heal, when you are under some sort of mental tension.

Lack of Proper Nutrition and Obesity

Nutrients are essential for fighting infection. Lack of proper diet therefore, makes the healing of a periodontal disease difficult. Research also reveals that obesity increases the risk of periodontal disease.

Lack of Sleep

A deficiency of sufficient amount of sleep at night (of about 6 hours per day at least) is responsible for impairing the body’s immune system that further leads to the progression of diseases like a periodontal disease.

However the worst habit to affect oral health among all these is smoking and/or tobacco chewing. Alcohol consumption is also an equally effective bane for your mouth health. Incorporating the noble habits of brushing twice and also flossing daily, can alone prevent you from 95 % oral diseases.

In one of the latest studies, it was found that smoking and less than six hours of sleep at night were the two most significantly contributing lifestyle factors that were responsible for worsening periodontal health. Also, research data showed that 38.5 percent of periodontal disease progression was due to the prevalence of excessive smoking.