Looking to have a happier holiday season this year? Maybe a healthier and more beautiful smile can help you and your family enjoy the season better. In fact, there are many ways that taking care of your smile this year can improve your holiday experience.
Learn how taking better care of your smile and maybe getting cosmetic dentistry can improve your holiday experience.
Smiling Makes You Happier
One of the most important things to remember is that smiling is not just a way to show that you are happy, it helps to make you happy. Our body and brain work together to create the sensation of happiness. Smiling starts because something makes you want to smile, either a spontaneous emotion, a desire to smile socially, or even a forced smile. But when you smile, your brain receives feedback from the smiling muscles, sending happy signals to the brain. This feedback loop accentuates the experience of happiness, making you feel happier.
So every time you stifle a smile because you are unhappy with the appearance of your teeth, you are actually stifling your joy. And who wants that during the holidays.
Smiling Spreads the Joy
One of the benefits of smiling is that it is contagious. When you smile at someone, they are likely to smile back. The impulse is just natural. And once you have triggered a smile in someone else, it sets off the same feedback loop in their brain, causing them to feel some joy.
So when you are stifling your smile, you are not just keeping yourself from enjoying the holidays, you are keeping other people from sharing in your joy.
No Discomfort
Enjoying the holidays is a lot harder if you are in pain. If your teeth or gums are hurting you, you are not going to be in the mood for enjoying many holiday festivities.
And temperature sensitivity can be a worse problem around this time of year, too. So many of our beloved activities–such as caroling, taking in the lights, or winter activities like building snowmen or ice skating–take place in the cold winter air. If your teeth are sensitive to cold, these can become very unpleasant.
And then enjoying hot drinks like cocoa, cider, and mulled wine are also a lot less enjoyable when your teeth are sensitive to heat or sweets. If you really want to be able to enjoy the holidays, your first step should be eliminating pain.
Enjoy Foods More
Dental pain can definitely be a problem when you are trying to enjoy all the special holiday foods. And it can even make it hard to eat some of the best foods. We are not just talking about Uncle Elbert’s dry turkey or Aunt Josephine’s rock-hard cookies, either. Just eating normal food can be painful if your teeth are not healthy.
And it is not just your teeth. If your jaws are imbalanced or stressed, chewing foods can become very painful. This can force you to give up all the great foods you love about the holidays and stick to a soft food diet.
But even that may not be enough. If your teeth and gums are unhealthy, you may experience a perpetual bad taste in your mouth. That can interfere with your ability to taste all the great flavors you remember from years past.
Avoid Exhaustion and Sickness
Are you exhausted all the time? Do your hosts or house guests report that your snoring is disruptive? If so, then you may have sleep apnea, and nothing will sap your enjoyment of any time of year like this condition.
And if you find that you are constantly beset by holiday colds, sleep apnea may be part of the problem. Poor sleep hampers your immune system and makes it more likely that you will get sick.
But the problem could also be your oral health. If your body is fighting a chronic gum or tooth infection, you are more susceptible to other illness. Not to mention that fighting those infections can exhaust you, too.
Let Us Make Your Seasons Brighter
If your oral health is interfering with your enjoyment of the holidays, we can help. Some treatments, like teeth whitening or filling a simple cavity, can be done so quickly that you will enjoy a brighter, healthier smile by Christmas. Others may take more time, but getting them treated ensures that next year you will be ready to enjoy a brighter, happier holiday season.
To learn more about improving the health and beauty of your smile in St. Louis, please call (314) 678-7876 (Downtown St. Louis) or (314) 678-7876 (Clayton) today for an appointment with cosmetic dentist Dr. Chris Hill at City Smiles.
