How Stress Can Affect your Oral Health

How our body reacts when we are highly stressed?

In our competitive life, stress has become an unavoidable part. Stress can affect our entire body, including our mouth. Our body parts react to stress differently. Sometimes we face life-threatening situations due to stress. When we are under pressure, the body starts to release stress hormones, which acts as the alarming signal of our body. Stress weakens our immunity. Instigate our brain to quench the instant craving. That’s why some people consume unhealthy food or follow unhealthy habits to get instant pleasure. Though smoking and drinking are a way of releasing your stress, these habits may harm you in the long term. These damaging habits can affect your overall health and put your oral health at risk.

What happens to your mouth when you are stressed?

Stress is unavoidable. You can’t avoid stress, but you can handle it. In fact, stress management is necessary to live a healthy life. If you don’t alleviate your stress strategically, it will become debilitating. Stress not only harms your mental health but also damage you physically. Stress negatively impacts your oral health. Researchers found a strong association between stress and oral health problems. Some of them are mentioned below:

Tooth grinding/ Bruxism

Stress generally promotes the habit of clenching and tooth grinding at night time. Teeth grinding causes headache, jaw pain, damaged teeth, and tooth decay.

Dry mouth

You can notice that when you are under extensive mental stress, you are looking for water. It happens because stress and anxiety dried out our mouths, which negatively impact on oral health. 

Saliva helps to clean the residual food particles and bacteria from our mouth. But when we are in stress, saliva production gets reduced, negatively impacting our dental health, and promoting plaque formation on teeth.

Cold sores

Herpes virus is responsible for cold sores and breakouts. Viral infection takes place when your immunity is low. When you are under stress, your immunity power gets reduced; in this situation virus can easily affect your body. Over-the-counter medicines can alleviate your cold sore issues.

Gum disease & infection

Increased stress levels can affect your gum. Reduced immunity puts your body at the extreme risk of developing an infection. Gum gets easily infected, sore and inflamed gum is the common symptom of gum infection. Gum infections cause bleeding, pain, and even tooth loss.

Canker sores

These are the small spots with a greyish or white base. It also comes with red borders. They develop inside the mouth. It comes with more significant numbers or pairs. Stress can amplify the Canker sore symptoms. Please avoid acidic food like lemon, tomato, citrus food, and chilies to reduce this problem. Canker sores generally disappear in 15 days.

Burning Mouth Syndrome

These oral problems are come up with an unpleasant burning sensation on the tongue, gums, palate, and lips. It happens due to prolonged intense stress.

Temporomandibular joint disorder

It is a severe disorder, comes with chronic jaw pain, stiff movement of jaw muscle, and headache.

Tooth grinding can affect your oral health in multiple ways. To avoid all these painful situations, you must know how to handle stress and anxiety.

How can you manage your stress level?

To protect your dental health, you have to manage stress. Here we will give you a holistic approach to handle stress and anxiety.

Exercise and yoga

Doing regular exercise is an excellent step to reduce work-life stress. Everyone should invest at least 30-40 minutes a day in exercise. Exercise has the capacity to alter your mood. It increases the blood circulation in the overall body.

To reduce your stress, you can stretch your body, go for a walk or jog. Massage therapy is also very much helpful to relax your nerve and muscle. In spa treatment, experts massage your body with essential oils. An intense massage with a soothing smell of oil relaxes your brain and alleviate stress.

If massage is not possible, you can simply take a hot water bath after exercise. It will calm your body and mind and promotes restful sleep.

Deep breathing exercise:

Breathing exercise can calm your mind, relieve you from stress and anxiety. You can practice breathing exercises early morning on an empty stomach. Slowly inhale and exhale the air. Include breathing exercises in your regular habit. A small habit in your daily routine can change your phycological and physiological condition. Help you to lead a happy and stress-free life.

Calm your mind

You need to invest some time in mental health. We take care of our body but often forget to take care of our mind. It is true. In our busy lifestyle, it isn’t easy to balance everything perfectly. But to live a happier and healthier life, you have to take care of your soul. You can include some restful things in your life, including yoga, prayer, meditation, Tai chi, listen to good music, spending time in nature. Collectively they are known as mindful practice. Invest your time in Hobby

Try to follow mindfulness, take care of your body and mind, maintain oral hygiene. These simple things will help you to manage good oral health. If your dental health gets severe, please consult with your dentist nearby.