Benefits of Cosmetic Dentistry

Understanding the benefit of cosmetic dentistry can help you understand why it’s a good investment, and why you shouldn’t wait to take advantage of it.

Many people think that cosmetic dentistry only improves the appearance of your smile. Not true: it offers substantial potential benefits for your oral health as well.

Straight teeth are important to an attractive smile. Crooked teeth cause people to make assumptions about you and your oral health. Some of this is justified, because crooked teeth can potentially impact your oral health.

Crooked teeth are a lot harder to clean than straight teeth. They can trap food and make it hard for you to get a toothbrush or floss into all the critical areas. You might end up with plaque–a combination of oral bacteria and food residue–building up. Over time, this can increase your risk of gum disease, as well as tooth decay.

Clinical studies show that orthodontics can potentially decrease your risk of gum disease by almost half.

When discussing holistic dentistry, we talked about how tooth-colored fillings made of porcelain or ceramic material are more biocompatible. They not only look better, they’re healthier. Inlays and onlays also restore strength to your teeth–not encourage cracking the way that metal amalgam dental fillings can.

Plus these tooth-colored fillings don’t contain mercury the way metal amalgam does. Mercury is a highly toxic metal, and it can potentially impact your oral and overall health.

A missing tooth is probably the most obvious cosmetic complaint people have about their smiles. But this is more than a cosmetic defect. If you are missing a tooth, it can cause your other natural teeth to drift, leading to crooked teeth. With the large amount of space left by a missing tooth, your teeth can even tip over, which can lead to force on your teeth from an angle where the tooth is weak. This makes it more likely to get chipped and broken.

Sure, a dental flipper can hold the space and keep teeth upright, but a dental implant is much healthier by far–it supports itself and doesn’t need support from your natural teeth. This means it won’t decrease the expected life of your other teeth.

Because we rely on our smile in so many personal situations, it makes sense that improving your smile would also benefit your personal relationships.

Your most important relationship is with yourself. It’s the honest truth that no-one cares as much about the appearance of your smile as you do, but that doesn’t mean it’s unimportant. Every morning and every night, you have to look at yourself in the mirror, and if you don’t like what you see, it’s going to impact your self-image and your self-confidence.

Low self-confidence can make it hard to inspire yourself to do even the routine things on your schedule, let alone pursue your grandest plans and hopes and dreams. Greater confidence can put you on the path toward greater achievement.

Surveys show that both women and men place a high importance on an attractive smile when choosing potential dates. Many also say that this is a key factor in deciding whether to go on a second date with someone or not.

Improved self-confidence helps here, too. The better you feel about yourself, the more likely you are to talk to someone that you are interested in–and might be interested in you.

As we mentioned above, cosmetic dentistry can improve your oral health. One of the common symptoms of gum disease is halitosis (bad breath), caused by anaerobic bacteria infecting your teeth and gums. If you can keep halitosis under control, it can make people more eager to kiss you.

Even treatments like teeth whitening can make your smile look healthier. That way, your smile won’t give the appearance of poor health, which could cause people to decide they don’t want to kiss you, even if there’s no unpleasant smell.

Professional benefits of cosmetic dentistry are related to the so-called “beauty dividend.” This theory has been put forward by evolutionary economists, who claim that a more attractive appearance is favored because it signals healthy genes. This genetic benefit is rewarded not just in selecting romantic partners, but in social hierarchies. In fact, studies show that people with a more attractive smile might earn as much as 4% more over their lifetime.

Here’s how that works on a microeconomic scale.

Surveys with hiring managers show that a person is 58% more likely to be hired over someone with the same skill set if they have a more attractive smile. This can lead to more time being employed, and greater job mobility to move from one position to another in search of better compensation.

Surveys of hiring managers also indicate that they are more likely to make a higher salary offer for a person with a more attractive smile. This means that throughout their lives, people with more attractive smiles are likely to receive higher compensation.

How significant is the beauty dividend? As we noted above, it amounts to an estimated 4% increase in annual earnings. For an average man with a bachelor’s degree, that’s almost $100,000 over a lifetime.