Smokers lose their teeth sooner

Christiane Fux studied journalism and psychology in Hamburg. The experienced medical editor has been writing magazine articles, news and factual texts on all conceivable health topics since 2001. In addition to her work for, Christiane Fux is also active in prose. Her first crime novel was published in 2012, and she also writes, designs and publishes her own crime plays.

More posts by Christiane Fux All content is checked by medical journalists.

Artificial teeth at 50? Not a nice idea. But that is exactly what smokers in particular are threatened with. Depending on the cigarette dose, your risk of premature tooth loss increases many times over.

The reason: Tooth loss is the result of tooth decay - but above all from inflammation of the gums, and the latter is more common in smokers. The gums recede, the teeth become loose, because the poisonous smoke in the mouth is bad for the blood circulation in the gums.

But smokers of all people often notice that their gums are sick late: “Unfortunately, smoking masks bleeding gums - one of the few symptoms of periodontal disease. This can make the gums appear healthier in smokers than they actually are, ”explains Thomas Dietrich from the University of Birmingham. The extent to which smoking is also associated with an increased risk of tooth decay has not yet been finally clarified.

Triple risk of tooth loss

Together with colleagues from the German Institute for Nutritional Research Potsdam-Rehbrücke and other European institutions, the scientist followed the dental health of 23,376 participants who the center had recruited as part of a larger Europe-wide study. Among other things, they found out that premature tooth loss was dependent on the amount of cigarettes smoked.

It was particularly noticeable in heavy smokers under the age of 50: men who smoked 15 cigarettes or more a day lost their teeth 3.6 times as often as non-smokers of the same age. For women under 50 with the same consumption, the risk was 2.5 times higher than that of their peers.

The gums can recover

The good news is that those who quit smoking gradually reduced the risk of premature tooth loss. However, the gums needed some time to fully recover: "That can take more than ten years," says first author Dietrich.

Smoking is the greatest avoidable health risk in Germany: Those who smoke are more likely to suffer heart attacks or strokes, and are more likely to develop various forms of cancer. But beauty also suffers from the blue haze: the skin ages faster, the teeth discolor and - apparently also fall out earlier.

In Germany, almost 30 percent of women and men over the age of 18 smoke. At 32.6 percent, men are slightly more represented than women, who smoke 27 percent. (cf)

Source: T. Dietrich1,2, Smoking, Smoking Cessation, and Risk of Tooth Loss, The EPIC-Potsdam Study, August 4, 2015, doi: 10.1177 / 0022034515598961

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