No one wants chip a tooth, so if you’re wondering how to avoid such a fate, here are the top 3 ways you can chip or break a tooth.
- Eating Something Hard
Hard foods such as popcorn kernels, toffee, and hard candy all have the potential to chip or break your teeth when you bite into them, so use caution when eating these foods. Avoid kernels when eating popcorn and suck on hard candy until it has become soft and brittle before biting into it. Toffee you can break into small, bite-sized pieces with your hands or a knife, so you can just pop it in your mouth and suck on it until it become soft enough for you to safely bite into it.
- Facial Trauma
The famous Hollywood image of someone in a fight spitting out a bloody tooth is only slightly exaggerated. It might not happen as often as Hollywood would like us to think, but taking a hit to the face (most commonly a sports injury, a hard object, or even just walking into a glass wall or door) does run the risk of causing sufficient trauma to one or more of your teeth. It might knock the whole tooth out, or it might just break or chip the tooth, in which case you’ll be spitting out pieces of tooth (assuming you don’t swallow them) and then you’ll have to deal with having a partial tooth in your mouth until you can make it into your dentist’s office.
- Cavities
Cavities can cause the teeth to become brittle, in which case, they’re more likely to chip or break when they’re used to bite down on hard foods or if you take a hit to the face. Amalgam fillings that are big and/or old can also cause the remaining tooth to become brittle over time, so be especially careful when biting down on hard foods in areas of your mouth where you know you have cavities, even if those cavities have been filled a long time ago. It might be tempting to use our back teeth and molars to bite down on foods that are hard and crunchy, but if one or more of those back teeth has had an amalgam filling for a while, you could be risking chipping or breaking that tooth.
Not all broken or chipped teeth are painful right away. If it’s just a chip off the tip of the tooth, it probably won’t reach a nerve, which means you may not even realize right away that you’ve chipped a tooth. In some cases, you might just experience heightened sensitivity to heat and/or cold in that tooth.
Regardless of how you chipped your tooth, the important thing is to make an appointment with your local dentist as soon as possible.
If you want to keep your teeth healthy and strong, you must take care of them. At Simply Smiles Dentistry, we can show you how to properly care for your teeth. You will have a great smile that lasts a lifetime.
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Until next time…Keep on Smiling!