19 Apr What Happens If You Don’t Get Dental Implants and Just Live with the Gap in Your Teeth

If you do not replace your missing tooth with a dental implant, a few things might happen:

Shifted Teeth

Your teeth were created to hold and support one another. When one goes missing, the others move over time to fill the void.

As teeth shift to compensate within your mouth, they may appear crooked. Straight teeth leaning inwards to cover a gap might cause more unequal spaces, giving the appearance of buck teeth or gnarled teeth.

Uneven Tooth Growth

Opposing teeth also help to keep each other’s growth under control. Without an opposing tooth to keep it in check, the unopposed tooth can grow longer than it should. This causes tooth growth to be irregular.

Patients with missing teeth frequently have extended teeth, which are attempting to fill spaces where opposing teeth should be.

This can make chewing difficult, or, even worse, make it difficult to seal your mouth properly.

Imbalanced Bite

It is possible that your neighboring teeth will shift and collapse into the gap. This will in turn lead to an imbalanced bite. An imbalanced bite means that some teeth are subjected to more stress from your bite as compared to others, resulting in unequal wear and tear!

Mouth Alignment Problems

A misaligned mouth can be caused by deformed and unequal teeth. Your mouth appears misaligned because your teeth have shifted to adjust or have grown longer than they should have. The way you chew alters. Your jaw muscles are also attempting to compensate for the alteration.

Your face will become asymmetrical as a result of this adjustment over time. Because your mouth’s natural movements have changed, you’re more likely to acquire speech difficulties. At this time, you may experience headaches, advanced tooth decay, and weakening teeth.

Loss of Jawbone Mass

Last but not least, one of the most frightening consequences of missing teeth is the loss of jawbone mass. A missing tooth can cause the jawbone’s mass to diminish year after year, resulting in a weakened jaw.

When bone mass is reduced, the bone collapses in on itself, pulling the muscles and tissues linked to it with it. Because your face’s muscles and tissues are related to crucial locations on your bone structure, this can significantly alter your overall facial anatomy.

When bone mass is reduced, the bone collapses in on itself, pulling the muscles and tissues linked to it with it. Although this is a gradual process, it does have an impact on your overall appearance over time. You do not want this to happen to you while you are still young.

Stress Cracks

You will naturally chew more on the side with more teeth and the rate of wear and tear on the side that you favor will be significantly increased. All these issues may not give rise to symptoms in the beginning. 

But over time, the teeth that have more wear and tear may have stress cracks, accelerated enamel wear and/or sensitivity leading on possibly to a full blown toothache. This would require extensive treatment that could potentially incur a higher cost than if you were to do the implant in the beginning!

Therefore, it is always advisable to replace missing teeth with dental implants to recreate balance to the bite and to ensure that the bite forces are distributed evenly to as many teeth as possible.

For many years, we have installed dental implants effectively for our customers at Elite Dental. Our track record bears witness to this. We take pride in going above and beyond for each and every one of our customers.

Come see us if you want to learn more about dental implants, and we will assist you with the initial evaluation.