Many people lose teeth for many reasons, including ignoring the need to treat cavities. According to the United States Centers for Disease Control, more than one-fourth of the nation’s adults have tooth decay that has gone untreated. Dental implants are effective at replacing badly damaged, decayed, and missing teeth. Let’s take a closer look at how tooth implants could improve your confidence.

Restore Your Smile

Depending on where the teeth are missing, your smile might be affected. If you are missing one or more of your front teeth, it makes sense that you smile less if you're self-conscious about your visibly missing teeth. Fortunately, tooth implants can replace damaged or missing teeth and restore your smile. Implants look the same as natural teeth.

Straighten Your Jawline

When you're missing teeth, it affects the jaw. Over time, the jaw can weaken and shrink. As the jaw changes, it affects your appearance by giving your jaw a sunken appearance. The missing teeth and weakened jaw also create more wrinkles, which greatly age the patient’s appearance. Replacing the missing teeth with implants helps to restore the jawline and prevent wrinkles from developing prematurely.

Eat More of What You Like

You might find yourself avoiding some of your favorite foods if you're missing teeth. The effect on your exposed gumline might be too painful to eat some stiffer foods like the chips in a serving of nachos. If you still have decayed teeth that should be pulled and replaced with implants, you might find it painful to eat certain hot or cold foods. Using implants to replace missing or badly decayed teeth will restore your ability to eat most foods that you enjoy.

Improve Your Speech

Losing one or more teeth can affect your speech. Even partly missing teeth could affect your speech by leaving a space for air to escape while you're talking. You might start making a whistling sound while pronouncing certain words or syllables or notice a slight change in how your speech sounds. You can improve the situation with tooth implants that replace your missing teeth and put an end to whistling sounds and other issues that arise.

If you need dental services, it's important to take action. Learn more about tooth implants by calling or submitting an online request to schedule an appointment with David Philip Young, DMD. Our team is here to help!