Life Without Smoking Protects Your Teeth
Published on May 13, 2010 7:19 AM
Usually teeth become worse because the daily cigarette use, because the toxins in tobacco smoke encourage immunological processes which then contribute to the destruction of the jaw bone.
As a result, approximately all smokers are more frequently affected by inflammatory disorders of the periodontal diseases and also almost twice of them have the risk of loss of teeth in comparison with non-smokers.
Also smoking can have many other bad effects. For example it can also cause fatal cancer of the oral cavity. “Approximately 10,000 people in Germany are diagnosed with cancer of the oral cavity and pharynx yearly and about 4,500 die from this disease, especially men,” declared Dr. Martina Pötschke-Langer, prevention expert and head of DKFZ’s Division of Cancer Prevention.
The only escape from this kind of deadly disease is only quitting smoking. Of course the attempts of quitting are more successful with professional help, which can also be offered by dentists. Dentists can make a big influence in helping people to stop their smoking habit, because usually they see their patients at very standard intervals.
Dr. Dietmar Oesterreich, vice president of the German Dental Association reported: “Approximately 76 percent of adults and almost 66 percent of teenagers in Germany go to the dentist at least once a year. And every time dentists have the opportunity for to motivate smokers to quit smoking and, so, to reduce disease risks and contribute to ameliorating their health.”
And so, the German Dental Association encourages all dentists to become more active in advising smokers and in this way promoting to all their patients’ oral health.
Furthermore, dental section is the main basis of an interdisciplinary approach in stop-smoking counseling, researchers concluded.
The German Cancer Research Center is the largest biomedical research institute in Germany and is a participant of the Helmholtz Association of National Research Centers. More than 2,000 staff members, including 850 scientists afford the foundations for developing new approaches in the prevention, diagnosis, and treatment of oral cancer.
