How Stress Can Affect Your Mouth and Impact Oral Hygiene

Is it possible that stress can impact your mouth? The answer is yes. Shocking, right? Let us elaborate on how stress can affect your mouth.

Stress is a part of our life especially when everyone is trying to manage professional life along with personal life. Chronic stress can become the reason behind many health conditions including cardiovascular disease, digestive issues and immune system issues.

Learn the impact of stress on your oral hygiene in this guide.

Stress And Oral Hygiene

The emotional and physical symptoms of stress can include anxiety, headaches and stomach issues. One thing that needs to be noted is that stress can harm your dental hygiene. Here is how stress can affect oral health:

Temporomandibular joint disorder (TMD)

Temporomandibular joint disorder (TMD) is a disorder of jaw joints and chewing muscles that causes problems with chewing, talking, and opening and closing the mouth. Symptoms can be headaches, pain in the face, neck and shoulders, dizziness, teeth senstivity and pain in the jaw or chewing muscles.

Teeth grinding

Teeth grinding is very common in stress. This can happen at any time – even at night time. Continuous teeth grinding can lead to loss of teeth, damage to tooth enamel and headaches. Teeth grinding can also crack or fracture teeth, though this can be corrected with the help of dental implants or crowns.

Poor oral health

Poor oral health because stress does not let you focus on things like brushing and flossing. Stress can completely change the daily routine of a person. If you don’t focus on your oral hygiene you may experience plaque and tartar buildup.

Dry mouth

Stress can affect saliva production which can lead to dry mouth. It affects your mouth’s ability to neutralise acids, wash away bits of food and control the growth of bacteria. Tooth decay, bad breath and oral infections can be the results of a dry mouth.

You learned how stress can affect oral hygiene which does not sound so good, right? So, let us now dive into the solution. Let us see how you can now manage stress to prevent dental problems.

Manage Stress To Promote Better Oral Hygiene

Mental and dental health needs some changes in life so that stress can be done away with and a beautiful smile can be welcomed. Here is your guide to managing stress for dental hygiene:

Relax

Practice relaxing techniques like deep breathing, meditation and yoga. These practices can help you reduce physical and mental tension. Deep breathing is an effective way to immediately deal with stress. Practising it daily positively brings changes in body and mental health.

Deep breathing lowers heart rate and muscle tension so if you are a heart patient or facing high heart rates you must practice deep breathing.

Mediation helps clear the mind and reduces stress. This can help you control stressful activities like teeth grinding.

Exercise

Exercise is a powerful way to deal with stress. Exercise is a body’s mood lifter which helps in reducing levels of cortisol, the stress hormone. You can perform walking, swimming or cycling. These activities will improve your mental health and also reduce jaw tension and muscle strain, preventing teeth grinding.

Say No to Stress

Say no to bad activities like teeth grinding. You must avoid this habit by performing stress relief activities. Perform yoga or do a walk if you feel stressed. You can also go for a jog to connect with nature and get some positive vibes.

Sometimes we don’t do teeth-grinding intentionally but it just happens and you can control it with regular exercise and mood-lifting activities.

Diet

Stress can control you and this can lead to unhealthy eating habits. This can include eating a lot of sugary foods, no fixed time for eating and eating anything. And these all can increase the risk of tooth decay.

Stress can also make you neglect brushing and flossing. And by not focusing on brushing and flossing you would experience several dental issues.

Discuss with your dental specialist on how you can maintain a healthy diet while focusing on your oral hygiene. Don’t forget to stay hydrated because stress leads to a dry mouth which can increase the risk of cavities and bad breath.

Regular dental checkups help specialists detect the problem at an early stage and prevent major diseases.

Conclusion on How Stress can affect your Mouth and Oral Hygiene

Stress can occur to anyone at any stage and it can create problems in dealing with several other issues. Not just mental but dental health is also affected by stress. Manage your stress and say no to the severe outcomes that stress can lead to.

Regular checkups allow you to deal with dental issues easily and this would then not lead to severe issues. You can also get Hollywood like Smile in Dubai. All you have to do is manage stress and not let it control your mental and dental health.