Your Teeth: They’re Not Just for Chewing

The human body is an amazing machine. Every cell in your body is a vital part of some organ. If any organ in your body stops functioning properly, the entire body suffers. When we think of human organs, we usually think of hearts and stomachs, but teeth are organs, too, and like all other organs they are vital to good health. In fact, your teeth have five important jobs.

Job 1 is pretty obvious – we need teeth to chew our food, the first step in digestion. Most of us enjoy eating, but would we enjoy it as much if our teeth were loose, painful or missing? A healthy diet contains many foods which must be broken up into small pieces before they can be swallowed. When our teeth aren’t functioning as they should, our health will suffer.

Job 2 is aiding in speech. When we speak, the tongue touches the teeth to help make sounds. With no teeth you will definitely find it difficult to speak properly. Suddenly any word with an f, h, j, l, s, t, v, or z is going to become a challenge to pronounce correctly.

Job 3 is to give your face fullness and a pleasant facial shape. Bad teeth, or no teeth, not only hampers a person’s physical health, but can also affect a person’s mental, emotional, and social health.

Job 4 is closely related to job 3. Our lips, teeth, jaws, cheeks, and facial muscles all play an important role in creating facial expressions. Facial expressions are an important form of non-verbal communication and usually tell us what people are thinking or feeling. Without a mouth and its structures, we lose the ability to adequately display our emotions through our expressions.

You may find job 5 somewhat surprising, but visit any day care and you will quickly be reminded that teeth are very handy when it comes to self-protection and attack. Of course this is a natural instinct parents work hard to extinguish quickly, but should you find yourself under attack a healthy set of choppers could just save your life!

Your teeth should last as long as you do if you take care of them properly. Unfortunately, people often take their teeth for granted and neglect even the most basic dental care. Fear of the dentist, expense, time constraints, and just plain laziness are some of the reasons people neglect their teeth. There’s not much we can do to help with the laziness, but you will find we at Apple Dental are pretty good at helping you with most other problems you may be dealing with when it comes to your dental health. Give us a call and make an appointment today.