Breathing and Your Dental Health
by Dr. Stephen J. Parr D.D.S.
Read Breathing and Your Dental Health by Dr. Stephen J. Parr D.D.S. to learn more about Grove Smiles® Dentistry and our Dentistry office in Coconut Grove, FL.
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Breathing is the air of life and something we do without even thinking about it. When someone says, there is an unhealthy way to breath it may take you by surprise.
In fact breathing through your mouth rather than your nose can lead to a multitude of health and hygiene problems. That is why it is important to establish healthy breathing habits even ones that may have developed early in life.
Why Is Mouth-Breathing Bad?
Mouth-breathing can cause all kinds of short-term issues, many of which are connected to poor sleep quality from getting insufficient oxygen by breathing through the mouth. If you are exhibiting the following symptoms, it may be due to mouth-breathing.
Impaired Speech: when your mouth is always open, certain sounds become harder to say.
Halitosis (chronic bad breath): an open mouth tends to be a dry mouth, which means there isn’t enough saliva to clean out the germs.
Tooth Decay: other serious byproducts of dry mouth are tooth decay and cavities.
Irritability, Lethargy, and Inattention: less oxygen means worse sleep, which makes it much harder to focus and have quick, concise thoughts; not to mention the impact on your happy demeanor.
Adverse Effects Heighten With Age
While the above issues are bad enough, the problems that come from mouth-breathing don’t stop there. If left unchecked, mouth-breathing can cause the following:
Teeth Shifting: whether our teeth were made beautifully straight by orthodontic or Invisalign treatments, there is a higher chance of the teeth moving back to their pre-braces position.
Altered Facial Structure: the bones in the face can develop or change due to the mouth-breathing, resulting in flatter features, droopy eyes, a narrow jaw, and a smaller chin.
Sleep Apnea: a severe sleep disorder that occurs when a person’s breathing is interrupted during sleep. People with untreated sleep apnea will repeatedly stop breathing during their sleep, sometimes hundreds of times. This stop in breathing means the brain — and the rest of the body — may not get enough oxygen.
TMJ: a type of temporomandibular disorder or TMD that can cause pain in your jaw joint and in the muscles that control jaw movement.
If It’s So Unhealthy, Why Do We Do It?
The habit of mouth-breathing can be caused by many different things. For some, it is simply a habit, in which we need to make a conscious effort to breathe through our noses to correct. For others who may suffer from a misaligned bite that makes it difficult to keep the mouth closed, allergies that block the nose, or large tonsils that obstruct the airway the solution to stop mouth breathing is a little more complicated.
Help Keeping You Healthy For Life
If you have a mouth-breathing habit, it often isn’t as simple to break as telling you to stop. When it is caused by one of the problems listed above, they will need treatment before nose-breathing can become natural (and in some cases, possible).
If you would like to learn more, schedule an appointment with us at Grove Smiles Dentistry of Coconut Grove, FL so that we can determine the cause of the mouth-breathing and what action to take next to encourage healthier breathing.
For Your Health,
Dr. Stephen J. Parr D.D.S.
