It’s not unusual, as ex-smoker Tom Jones might still croon (he’s 86 now), that the reason for needing dental implants is directly related to smoking. As most smokers know only too well, it’s an established risk factor for a list of respiratory, lung and cardiovascular diseases, Type 2 diabetes, osteoporosis, cataracts, macular degeneration and reproductive issues, there’s also gum disease.
Yee-ha, right?
With all the known problems associated with the habit, why would anyone with any intelligence choose to do it?
Why do we do anything, really.
Why would someone who doesn’t smoke and would never dream of doing it, regularly consume bacon, sausages, deli meats, white bread, fast foods, ice cream and soft drinks? Because they like it. Because being a (relatively) free world, they can. Because they’re addicted.
That delicious combination of fat, sugar and salt releases the same ten-fold surge of dopamine in the brain as nicotine, a surge un the normal neural pathway of reward: our biological learning signal. It lies to us, and tells us that the thing that just triggered it is vital for survival, no matter the cognitive dissonance: cigarettes won’t save you, death isn’t defied by a donut and there’s no immortality in ice cream.
Smokers are complex beings just being complex.
Dopamine isn’t the only usual suspect in the artificial stimulation line-up, creating the intense pleasure and repetition compulsion; and smoking and foods aren’t the only addictions you can have. Singularly or simultaneously, good, bad or indifferent, we all have a habit or behaviour shaped by genetics, biology, vulnerability and life experience that has us do whatever it is, again and again and again.
And again. And maybe a few thousand times after that.
Smokers are divided between pleasure and rationality; reflective of a brain divided, both figuratively and literally.
Plato described it as a chariot pulled by two horses, Freud as the id, ego and superego. Stoicism and hedonism are just two philosophical attempts to solve this very human condition of contradiction, where logically we know the most useful course of action, and yet are compelled to do precisely the opposite with emotion in the driver’s seat.
Why do smokers do it? Because a life devoid of passion and joy is not much of a life at all. And with AI and cyborgs ruling the world in ways they never should soon enough, just because we can’t beat ’em doesn’t mean we should join ’em.
Willingly at least; in follow-on to the many ways we have blindly already. The 21st century has the evolutionary function of the biological hardwiring of cognitive dissonance as tweaked and peaked as is (barely) possible.
Everyone has their own idea of what calms the beast of living in and around lives with little meaning and mega max where pleasure does not fulfil, it simply demands more. More breadth and depth in distraction from the relentless awareness of existence rife with the vacuous and voracious; sucked in and hungry for it.
Thinking, understanding and learning along the way of life that real enjoyment doesn’t come easy so you’ve gotta take what you can get, conflates, translates and mutates into many things. Experiences set the marker like a depth reading beside a rural river, down which a boat named Whatever floats.
Whatever for some, is smoking.
Or vaping. Or any such activity involving combustion or evaporation to substances to the oral cavity to create a relationship of some sort with the body, and many parts within it. A relationship can be likened to a sexy new one, that in a warp of time so simultaneously quick and equally slow, ends in an onsite caravan, subsumed on a daily basis by a needy, dysfunctional, and swelling swarm of crazy relatives.
Of which you are one.
What’s not to fire up and inhale?
Whether temporary or not, stress reduction doesn’t come easy so smokers gotta take what they can get.
Appetite suppression is a welcome tinny with an outboard in the rising river of food and grocery costs, and each inhalation delivers a contented sense of achievement that only chemicals, yoga or financial stability can.
Having convenience drive what pleasure dictates is addictively convenient. What constitutes pleasure is how it’s framed: and it’s what we chase. What makes others’ addictions so impossible to understand (..crack? Smack? Feet? Really??) is that only ours are normal, under control and certainly not under-controlled.
Restricted blood flow to soft tissue and gums is a consequence of the pleasure of smoking. It also changes the oral biome and alters the saliva, which means teeth rarely remain unscathed. Even if they do, it amounts to little when they can’t anchor in healthy gums.
That smokers can’t have dental implants isn’t true; that some clinicians won’t take them as implant patients is.
As with any procedure, implants carry an inherent failure rate. From genetics, health conditions and the skill of the practitioner, throughout the months-long stages of the procedure – all of which are intrusive – things can go wrong. It’s an aspect discussed and understood as part of the process of patient decision-making. So this, dear smokers, is a Sunbury dentist’s perspective, a view for your benefit, or not, as it still remains a “filthy habit”.
The short term success rate for implants (being between one-and-five years) for ideal patients under ideal conditions is up to 98%.
Of course it is. Anything ideal paired with optimal something else will have a low failure rate. Throw everything else that counts into consideration, and it’s probably 75-80%.
For smokers it’s not much less.
What is important is to not smoke for a few days before the procedure, and definitely not during each of the healing processes. It’s useful to increase the regularity of check-ups, and be more vigilant than most with oral hygiene routines, but there’s nothing to say that a smoker’s smile can’t be smokin’ hot.
Whether a smoker or not, having implants means no more chewing on hard objects, never skipping brushing and flossing, and always remembering that teeth aren’t tools for cracking nuts and beer bottle opening.
Having dental implants is a life changing procedure. New perspective comes with enhanced confidence and elevated self-worth. For many, pleasure is reframed, and smoking is out of the picture.
Smokers are complex beings just being complex, and many dentists refuse to do dental implants for them. Here at Sunbury Dental on Evans Street we have a different view.