Dental implants restore missing teeth and enhance your smile, but the improvement in your appearance is far from the only advantage. Your Katonah, NY, dentists, Drs. Enyoung Park and Terry Lin of ParkLin Dental, can help you consider all the benefits of dental implants.
How dental implants replace missing teeth
A dental implant allows your dentist to reconstruct your entire missing tooth. Implants may not look like your natural roots, but they function the same way. The tiny titanium posts are added to your jawbone during minor oral surgery and soon begin to osseointegrate, or bond, to your jawbone.
Osseointegration ensures that your synthetic roots are strong enough to withstand years of wear and tear and chewing. Dental implants are connected to dental crowns to restore the visible parts of your teeth.
4 ways implants can help your smile
Dental implants can:
- Make Eating Easier: Losing one tooth can compromise your ability to bite, tear and grind foods. When multiple teeth or all of your teeth are missing, chewing becomes very difficult. Dental implants make it possible to return your usual diet.
- Help You Avoid Changes to Your Biting Power: It takes considerable power to bite into and chew hard or fibrous foods. Without strong tooth roots, it's just not possible to chew these foods. Since dental implants are securely attached to your jaw, you won't experience any loss of biting power.
- Keep Your Other Teeth from Drifting: Losing a tooth can have more than just an aesthetic impact. After tooth loss, other teeth may start to move toward the gap in your smile. Unfortunately, the movement can alter the alignment of your teeth and even change your bite, the way your upper and lower teeth fit together.
- Protect Your Jawbone: Although you may not feel anything, your jawbone can change after you lose a tooth. Called "resorption," the problem occurs when your jawbone shrinks due to decreased stimulation from tooth roots. Eventually, resorption can cause your teeth to loosen and may be responsible for facial sagging. Dental implants prevent resorption from occurring by offering the stimulation your jawbone needs.
Restore your smile with dental implants. Call your dentists in Katonah, NY, Drs. Park and Lin of ParkLin Dental, at (914) 232-8182 to schedule an appointment.