How Eating Disorders Can Affect Your Mouth

How Eating Disorders Can Affect Your Mouth

Jul 01, 2022

What you eat will always affect your oral and overall health. What’s more, how you eat also affects your oral health. Unhealthy habits and nutritional deficiencies will significantly affect your oral health. When you have an eating disorder, you could cause a ripple effect that will permanently damage your oral health. This is why you need to visit our dentist in 94806 for checkups.

Eating disorders are not uncommon; over 10 million people are suffering from an eating disorder. While anyone could develop an eating disorder, mostly teenagers and women are affected the most. Seeking cosmetic dentistry in San Pablo can do you good since our dentist can notice the first effects of eating disorders.

As you know, eating disorders will also affect your relationships and self-image. So, you need to get help to deal with the eating disorder. Let’s get a sneak peek of the types of eating disorders.

Types of Eating Disorders

The types of eating disorders are:

Anorexia

Anorexia is an eating disorder where people choose to limit their food and drink intake because they fear that they might gain weight or become obese even when they are severely underweight. They might excessively exercise and may feel compelled to cause themselves to vomit or use diuretics or enemas to get rid of the “excess weight.”

Bulimia

Bulimia nervosa is not so different from anorexia in that the person may feel the need to vomit or use laxatives to remove the excess weight. However, with bulimia, a person will excessively overeat several times a week or even a day, followed by a purge.

Binge Eating

Binge eating is more or less a food addiction. If you suffer from binge eating, you will overeat over short periods and cannot control the urges. Unlike people who have bulimia, binge eating doesn’t end with purging. Instead, people will feel shame, guilt, and remorse, with causes them to repeat the behavior.

How Can the Dental Team Help Detect Eating Disorders?

You might underestimate how vital dentists are to your oral health. But if you know that your oral health and overall health are tethered, you will have to reconsider. Our dentist in 94806 can detect the early signs of eating disorders which means that you will receive the dental care needed to ensure that your oral health is not affected.

When you sit in the dentist’s chair, our dentist will perform an oral examination to check the soft and hard tissues of your oral cavity to look for signs of possible injuries and tooth erosion. If there are lesions, cuts, or any other form of injury in the mouth, our dentist will be able to detect whether foreign objects were forced into the mouth to make you vomit.

Tooth erosion through stomach acid will be detected. What’s more, our dentist will also detect tooth decay that has been brought about by excessive sugar consumption. Your teeth and gums will also reveal whether you have nutrient deficiencies.

If the signs point to an eating disorder, our dentist will talk you through what they are seeing in your mouth and recommend the steps to treat any issues detected during the examination.

Also, you need to be honest with our dentist to get all the help you need to keep your dental and overall well-being in tip-top shape.

How Your Dental Health Impacts You

Your body is very intricate, meaning that all systems are interconnected. This is true with your oral health. Your dental health is tethered to your overall health. Therefore, you cannot expect there to be an issue with your oral health, and your overall health will not be affected. The converse is also true; your overall health impacts your dental health.

For instance, if there is gum inflammation, you might suffer from heart disease. The bacteria that causes gum inflammation can enter your bloodstream and travel to your heart leading to atherosclerosis and endocarditis.

Also, dementia can be caused by bacteria in the gums when you have gum disease. Respiratory infections may also arise if you harbor harmful bacteria in your mouth for a long time. Diabetic complications and hypertension can also arise because of gum disease.

So, taking care of your dental health will greatly benefit your overall health. Contact us at iSmile Dental San Pablo to schedule an appointment.

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