Showing off your beautiful smile doesn’t just look great… It can offer you amazing, lifelong benefits too! As dentists, there’s nothing we love more at Long Beach Family Dentist than to see our patients laughing and smiling. That’s why we always do our best to help your mouth stay as healthy as possible. With preventive care like dental cleaning and exams or restorative treatment like crowns and fillings, we can keep your smile in tip-top shape for years and decades to come. However, that’s not all there is to a smile. Laughing and smiling have their own unique benefits to our lives: Improved Appearance Nothing brightens up someone’s appearance like a smile. Laughing and smiling are considered instant face makeovers as they can almost completely transform how others see us. Studies have shown that we usually see people as younger than we are and more attractive when grinning or giggling. While no fountain of youth, a healthy sense of humor can make sure our inner child shines through to others. Stress-Relief Laughing and smiling are often thought of as reflections of our emotions. However, studies show that they can also directly influence how we feel. Every time you show off your pearly whites, it causes your cortisol levels to drop. Cortisol is one of the body’s stress hormones. It is a key figure responsible for setting off our fight-flight-freeze response, which keeps us tense and ready to respond to danger at a moment’s notice. Without them flooding our bodies and causing us to tense up, our bodies can finally relax and feel our stresses melt away. The act of smiling and laughing also releases endorphins, serotonin, and dopamine into your system. These hormones are crucial in helping us feel happier, reduce pain, and relieve stress. We smile when we feel happy, and we feel happy when we smile. And the cycle continues, with us feeling better and better the longer we smile. So if you feel like the world is resting on your shoulders, try giving a grin or a chuckle. Even if you are only faking it, you can still feel your mood noticeably improve and your thoughts become more positive! Improved Health When you laugh or smile, it can have a larger impact farther down the road. People with a habit of smiling and laughing often have better general health than those with more sour expressions. There is even evidence to show that laughing and smiling can help you live longer! Healthier Heart Did you know that people who laugh and smile more have healthier hearts? When you smile or laugh, it causes your body to briefly increase your heart rate before bringing it back down. As you and your heart calm down, your muscles also relax. Blood vessels stop constricting, improving your circulation and blood flow. Over time, this can significantly lower your risk of heart disease. Boosted Immune System Your heart isn’t the only part of your body that enjoys the health benefits of laughter. When you laugh, it increases your body’s immune cells and antibody count. Your immune system is central to fighting off illnesses, infections, and diseases. The reduced stress from smiling also keeps your immune system from straining itself, allowing it to be more efficient. This can help you stay healthier and prevent you from developing potentially life-threatening health issues!

Healthier Smile An improved immune system is also better at fighting off oral bacterial infections. If you have a good sense of humor, you can lower your risk of developing dental decay, gum disease, and certain mouth sores. While most non-cancerous sores disappear on their own within a few weeks, the same is not true for decay and gum disease. For decay, once plaque and bacteria break through your tooth’s enamel, it starts burrowing its way down until it infects your entire tooth and eventually kills it. With gum disease, what begins as mild gingivitis can later cause your gums to recede, your jawbone to shrink, and your teeth to become loose. At their worst, both can lead to your dentist needing to have one or more of your teeth extracted. Can dental problems cause health issues? Dental health is intrinsically linked with your overall health. If severe tooth decay and gum disease are left unchecked, oral bacteria don’t just spread to nearby teeth and gums. They can also enter the bloodstream to infect the rest of your body. Poor oral health can put you at a higher risk of developing heart disease, stroke, diabetes, pneumonia, and complications during pregnancy. The reverse is also true. General health problems can negatively impact your smile. Diabetes weakens your immune system, making it more difficult for you to keep your teeth and gums healthy. Rheumatoid arthritis has been linked to poorer oral health. And osteoporosis can lead to increased tooth loss and jawbone loss. Better Relationships Smiling makes us seem more approachable to others, making it easy for them to come over and start a conversation. This also makes for a better first-impression than if we were scowling or looked unhappy while talking to them. Plus, laughter is contagious. When we see someone laugh or smile, it can be difficult not to return it. This genuine connection helps us bond better with others, improving our relationships with them. Evidence shows that couples who laugh more together have happier, healthier, and more positive relationships than those who don’t. Improved Success Our jobs can come with their deadlines and stresses, but laughing and smiling throughout the day can help us get through them with grace. Some studies have shown that as these actions help us stay positive, they can improve our creativity, decision-making, and workplace productivity. Additionally, they can make us seem more charming and reliable to coworkers and bosses, raising our chances of being recognized and promoted at work. How Can I Smile More Naturally? Our dentists understand that not everyone feels confident in their smile. Sometimes it’s because of how it looks or how it feels. Other times, people just don’t feel like smiling or laughing. However, there are a few simple ways you can improve your grin and have it feel much more natural on your face. Practice Makes Perfect It’s been a long-known truth that the more we do something, the better we get at it. The same is true when it comes to laughing and smiling. Don’t feel afraid to try yours out in the mirror. It might feel a bit weird at first, especially as you adjust your facial expressions how you want them. However, this will pass with time. Once you’ve practiced your perfect smile enough, your mouth becomes used to that positioning, and muscle memory sets in. Soon, you’ll find that the ideal smile and laugh comes without any effort whatsoever.

Get A Smile Makeover Sometimes it’s not how we smile but how our smile looks that keeps us from putting our smiles on full display. When a person’s teeth aren’t perfect like a celebrity’s on the red carpet, it can be all too easy to hide our grins behind our hands or try to stop ourselves from smiling. To overcome this hurdle, many patients choose to see their dentist for a smile makeover. Visiting the dental office isn’t just about dental cleaning and cavity treatments. With an experienced professional, you can completely redesign your pearly whites using cosmetic dentistry. Procedures like porcelain veneers, Invisalign, and professional teeth whitening allow them to pinpoint and correct any aesthetic problems they have with their smiles. With cosmetic dentistry, our Long Beach dentists can fix: Up to a decade of yellowing and tooth staining Surface-level chips and cracks in enamel Lumps and misshapen teeth Teeth that are too long or too short Crookedness and overcrowding Jaw alignment issues (overbite, underbite, open bite, etc.) Too much or too little gum What are the benefits of cosmetic dentistry? Besides aesthetics, cosmetic dentistry can also offer other incredible benefits: Boosted confidence. People who have smiles they’re proud of have a marked improvement in their self-esteem. There’s no need for them to feel like they need to hide their beautiful smile, and they can show it off to the world without a second thought. Improved speech and eating. Orthodontic problems can affect our ability to eat and speak properly. By correcting these issues, you can feel confident during meals and conversations without any worry or discomfort. Better dental health. Multiple cosmetic problems put your smile at risk of tooth decay and gum disease. Cosmetic cracks and chips in teeth can put your smile at higher risk for tooth infection and decay. Crooked and crowded teeth are difficult to clean and take care of, making your morning and evening oral hygiene routines less effective. Additionally, with a healthier smile, you can save money in the long-term without needing to frequently have fillings, crowns, extractions, or other procedures done.