With dental science constantly improving, more of us are keeping our teeth longer. In fact, most of us are keeping our teeth for life these days, with a lower proportion of people needing dentures than ever.
But there’s a downside to keeping more of your natural teeth. Over time, your teeth can lose their beauty. Your teeth might have started out long, strong, and bright. But now they may be dim, dingy, and short. What should you do? There are many options for restoring your smile that preserve your overall oral good health but give you a much more beautiful smile.
Is It Time to Give up on Teeth Whitening?
Teeth whitening is one of the ways that people try to maintain the attractiveness of their natural smiles. And it can work–for a while.
Teeth whitening works to eliminate stains from the surface of your teeth. The remnants of coffee, tea, wine, and cigarette smoke can be broken down and removed from your teeth. Many people are really happy with the results at first, but, over time, you may notice that you are not getting the results you used to. For a while, you can battle this by getting stronger and stronger whiteners, but, eventually, you will realize that you just can’t get your teeth white that way.
The reason is that the layer that gives your teeth its beautiful white color is actually eroding over time. Also, the dentin–the yellow, brown, or even gray layer underneath the enamel can darken with age. This means that your teeth are just naturally darker in color when you’re older, and this may mean whitening won’t help anymore.
Short in the Tooth
Another problem people experience as they get older is that they might notice their teeth are shorter than they used to be. When our teeth develop and emerge, they come in at their full length, and the face develops around them. Skin, muscles, and fat deposits all develop in proportion to the size of the teeth and jaw.
This not only makes your smile disappear, it can make you look older. When your teeth wear down, the skin and tissues that are matched to them can wrinkle, fold, and sag, creating nasolabial folds, jowls, turkey neck, and other common signs of facial aging.
You might even notice some symptoms related to a jaw that is out of place, including jaw pain, headaches, ringing in the ears, neck pain, and more.
(If your teeth look like they’re getting longer–they probably aren’t. Instead, your gums are likely receding, as well as the bones around your teeth–this can lead to serious oral health problems, including lost teeth.)
Brighter and Longer
So, how do you deal with these problems? We can restore the brightness and the length of your teeth with a single procedure.
A smile makeover done with veneers can transform your entire smile. In just a few visits, you can have a smile that is beautiful and bright again, with teeth that are at their youthful lengths again. Veneers can beautify your teeth while maintaining their current health. Your teeth will be protected and preserved so you can continue to enjoy your good oral health.
This not only gives you the beautiful smile you’re looking for, it can have effects similar to a facelift: you’ll see a reduction in jowls, turkey neck, and wrinkles in the lower third of the face. And we will use neuromuscular dentistry to determine if TMJ might be responsible for many symptoms you’ve been experiencing. We can restore your jaw to a healthy, comfortable position at the same time we beautify your smile.
To learn how one of our smile makeovers can help restore the beauty of your smile while maintaining your healthy smile in the Hilton Head area, please call (843) 706-2999 today for an appointment with a cosmetic dentist at Beyond Exceptional Dentistry.
