Happy Teeth, Happy Life: Why your teeth are so important

Let’s start with the basics, teeth help us to eat. It might seem like a simple point but the role our teeth play in chewing food and breaking it down is absolutely essential to our lives. If food isn’t chewed properly, we can’t digest our food and digestion has a massive impact on our health. When digested properly, our food is broken down into smaller molecules which allows their nutrients to be absorbed into our bloodstream and carried around the body. If this process is disrupted (e.g. by missing or damaged teeth) you might not be able to get the nutrients you need to be healthy.

If kept in good condition, our teeth can help us to live longer and healthier lives. Research has shown that people who still have all their teeth at 74 have a much better chance of reaching 100. It also greatly reduces our chance of developing medical issues, such as arthritis, osteoporosis, dementia, heart disease, diabetes, and oral cancer. This might seem remarkable, but when you consider that our whole body is a connected system, it can be easier to see why a problem in one area could trigger a problem in another. The immediate connection our teeth have is to the other parts of our mouth.

However, what is less obvious is that this plays a crucial part in the way we sound when we speak. The space that our teeth take up in the mouth affects the way our tongue can move. Our teeth help us to make the wide variety of sounds that we can because it holds the tongue in place to form the different tongue positions which help us to pronounce words. If you try now to say the words ‘there’ or ‘the’ without putting your tongue on your teeth, and you’ll see what we mean.

The way our teeth are positioned in our mouth also plays a big part in the way our face looks. When people think of teeth, they often think of the way it makes our smile look. However, the teeth are embedded in the jawline which means any lost teeth can misalign your jaw and cheeks. A misaligned jaw is a very uncomfortable experience but it also makes your cheeks sink in your face. Not only does this make you look older, but it can also completely change the shape of your face and the way your whole face looks, in severe cases.

One of the best ways to make sure you lead a happy and healthy life is to make sure that you keep your teeth happy. Brushing your teeth properly on a regular basis helps to keep them healthy and the rest of your body healthy too! You should also have regular check-ups with the dentists to make sure there are no unseen issues which could develop into problems – we might be biased, but it’s true! We hope that the next time you eat or see yourself smiling in a photo, you should be thankful for your teeth and consider how important they really are!