Not everyone knows but our oral health is connected to a huge range of different body functions, hormones, and even stress can influence it as well. Shockingly, simple things such as menstrual cycles, pregnancy, and feeling stressed by the daily demands can result in negative effects on your teeth and oral health. You are able to combat these problems yourself at home by following some simple steps.
Smiling Makes You Beautiful
There have been some research studies completed that suggest smiling can actually make you beautiful. As a child, it seems that all we do is smile. A young child will often smile every couple of minutes and it can be able something as simple as a funny face that someone is pulling, however as we get older we start to smile less and less. It seems that as adults, we don’t smile anywhere near as much as we did as children.
Research has shown that if you smile about something you are genuinely happy about then it can be far better than getting a makeover or even a haircut. In numerous studies, smiling has even been noted as making you appear far more attractive to someone else. This happens because the ‘reward regions’ within the brain light up in response to seeing someone smile when you smile other people often view you as appearing to be far more sincere and friendly. So why aren’t we using the power of our smiles?
Stress May Be Compromising Your Smile Power
Stress is quite simply a state of being and feeling a strain, whether it’s mental, physical, environmental, nutritional or emotional. This state of strain is a result from feeling the demands of certain circumstances and comes about once your brain perceives a threat. The brain will process the threat and you will decide whether to fight, flee or freeze. As soon as you have made that decision, the pituitary gland will release a dose of adrenaline and cortisol into your system.
These hormones may even get released into your body even if your body isn’t experiencing what it considers to be a real threat. Long term stress wreaks havoc on every aspect of your mind, body and smile.
The Stressed Smile
Absolutely everyone has some stresses within their daily life, whether it’s at home or work. But chronic stressors are known to be bad for your whole-body health. Stress negatively effects your body in many ways from inducing high blood pressure, heart disease and even cholesterol. It is also known to be hard on your teeth and oral health. Long-term stress can lead to chronically elevated levels of the stress hormone cortisol, which can weaken the immune system. When the immune system is weak, conditions are ripe for bacteria from plaque to invade the gums. More and more research is revealing a strong link between stress and gum disease (periodontal disease). A Brazilian analysis of 14 previous studies showed that individuals under stress have a higher risk of gum disease. Symptoms of gum disease include bleeding gums, swollen gums, loose teeth, and bad breath. Left untreated, gum disease can lead to tooth loss.
Stress and Oral Health: The Stressed Smile
Here are six main ways in which stress can affect oral health negatively:
- Stress can cause you to be far more susceptible to cavities which are caused by there being an increased level of cortisol in your system which creates more acid.
- Due to feeling stressed, you may tend to grind or clench your teeth while you are sleeping at night which results in the enamel on your teeth rubbing off. If you know that you have a habit of doing this, you may want to wear a mouth guard at night to stop the effects of it on your teeth.
- Thanks to stress, you may even start coming out in canker sores. Canker sores form when small lesions form on the soft tissue within your mouth. Thankfully, canker sores aren’t much to worry about and can be treated at home and will go away within a couple of weeks, they are also not contagious.
- Stress increases the risk for someone developing gum disease as stress can make it difficult for the body to combat and fight infections.
- Stress can also wreak havoc on your saliva production. Saliva is important because it:
- Keeps your mouth moist and comfortable
- Helps you chew, taste, and swallow
- Fights germs in your mouth and prevents bad breath
- Has proteins and minerals that protect tooth enamel and prevent tooth decay and gum disease
- Lastly, stress can cause TMJD (Temporomandibular Joint Disorders), the temporomandibular joint is what joints together with the jaw and skull so if you ever feel your jaw popping or clicking, or experience jaw joint pain, then TMJD may be the cause of this.
Smile Your Stress Away
Smiling can change our brain, through the powerful feedback loop we discussed above. And your brain keeps track of your smiles, kind of like a smile scorecard. It knows how often you’ve smiled and which overall emotional state you are in therefore.
Smiling reduces stress that your body and mind feel, almost similar to getting good sleep, according to recent studies. And smiling helps to generate more positive emotions within you. That’s why we often feel happier around children – they smile more. On average, they do so 400 times a day. Whilst happy people still smile 40-50 times a day, the average of us only does so 20 times.
Why does this matter? Smiling leads to decrease in the stress-induced hormones that negatively affect your physical and mental health, say the latest studies:
Not only that
You’re a lot more attractive when you smile. Not just for other people to look at you, but you’ll also find yourself more attractive, which brings more confidence and helps you be happier about who you are. It’s also a natural face lift, using the muscles that defy gravity, so smiling keeps you looking young and healthy. Definitely a good thing.
Smiling is a great thing for your health. It boosts your immune system, helps you relax and de-stress, lowers your blood pressure if it’s too high, and also balances your hormones.
When you smile, your body releases endorphins, hormones that act as natural pain killers, and serotonin, which I lovingly call happy juice. So in a very physical way, smiling increases your health.
When you smile, your attitude shifts. It’s very difficult, if not impossible, to be in a bad mood when you smile. If you’re depressed or angry, try looking at yourself in the mirror and making yourself smile. It might be a fake-it-till-you-make it scenario at first, but very quickly your mood will change.
Also, the slouched over posture that most of us have when we down tend to improve by a long shot when we smile. Try slouching and smiling really bright. It’s hard to do! You naturally want to sit up tall and let your heart shine. Happiness and smiling go hand in hand. Even though we generally think we smile because we are happy, we can actually initiate the feeling of happiness by simply starting to smile.
Smiling is a gift to others. First of all, when you smile your a lot more fun to be around. And if someone is having a bad day and you smile at them, it can make a huge difference. By smiling you’re sharing something very pure. To me I think of it like sharing the light of your heart.
How to Prevent and Treat a Stressed Smile
Embrace a health whole approach that nurtures the mind body smile connections. Here are some very simple but effective ways to make sure that you are doing everything you can to prevent yourself from experiencing a stressed smile.
Sleep – make sure that you are getting between seven and nine hours of sleep every night, as a lack of sleep can definitely make you experience more stress than normal. If you are under a particular amount of stress then you should be mindful about your bedtime and making sure that you are getting enough.
Exercise – Exercise is related to our cardiovascular system, our emotions, our skin, bones and brains: you name it; it’s probably improved with regular exercise. Research is also showing that exercise contributes to good oral health.National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES III) survey, narrowed in on 2,500 people who reported that their level of physical activity and exercise had remained about the same over a ten-year period. This study found that subjects who engaged in moderate exercise less than three times per week had a 33 percent reduced the risk of periodontitis, compared with subjects who didn’t exercise at all. Further, those who vigorously exercised three times per week or more reduced their risk by more than 50 percent, compared to non-exercising subjects.
Eat well and feed your smile– Consume nutritious foods that alkalize the body and fight inflammation. Foods like sugar, alcohol and caffeine and make your body far more acidic which doesn’t help with oral health. Add in gut soothing foods that promote the absorption of much-needed smile healthy nutrients. Protein, calcium, phosphorous, zinc, antioxidants, folate, iron, vitamin A , vitamin B, vitamin C, vitamin D, omega-3fats, CoQ10 and arginine are key nutrients integral to a great smile.
Oral health It goes without saying that your tooth brush is a smiles best friend. I recommend making a natural tooth paste from ingredients in your kitchen. A great addition to your regime is coconut oil pulling to help restore a healthy oral ecology. Oral probiotics can also aid your mouth in establishing a healthy good /bad bacteria ratio.
Combat stress. Clinical observations and epidemiological studies suggest that experiences of negative life events, especially those manifested as depression, may contribute to an increased susceptibility to periodontal disease, temporomandibular joint issues, bruxism and xerostomia.
Inner smile meditation
A famous practitioner of inner-smile meditation is Grand Master Mantak Chia, who operates from the Tao Gardens Resort in Chiang Mai, Thailand.
From this idyllic base, Chia teaches the Universal Healing Tao, a self-help system for curing illness and stress and for enhancing all aspects of life. Its key concept is increasing the vital energy known as “chi”, through techniques such as inner-smile meditation and exercises such as tai chi. This life force energy is then circulated through the acupuncture meridians of the body and can help with health, vitality and balancing emotions as well as a range of creative and spiritual expressions.
How to do the Inner-Smile Meditation
For best results, Grand Master Chia recommends you practice this meditation in the morning and at night before bed for improved sleep and mood. As with any new experience, consistent practice is important.
- To begin the inner-smile meditation, sit comfortably on the edge of a chair with your palms on your knees. Straighten your spine, lifting it up from the top of your head. Then relax the muscles in your neck and throat.
- Next, smile outwardly. It might be helpful to use a positive memory to evoke the feeling of joy. Once you have a grin on your face, it’s time to smile inwardly. Picture a smiley face in your mind. Bring the smile to space between your eyebrows – your third eye or “Yin tang” in Chinese medicine – and allow it to rest there for a few breaths.
- Now take the smile and glide it in turn to each part of your body. You can imagine your body as hollow and the smile as a glowing ball of light filling every dark corner. Alternatively, you can picture every organ, tissue and bone smiling. If your smile gets stuck or fades at a tense or painful spot, breathe gently into that part of your body. Imagine inhaled breath moving into that area.
Each morning celebrate your smile. Remember your smile has a powerful effect on your entire being, it is a reflection of your health and happiness.
Learn how to Activate the Power of Your Smile.
Enjoy the benefits of an empowered smile.
