Eating Disorders Affect Your Dental Health

When a woman begins to use food -- whether too much or too little of it -- to try and express her emotional needs or manage difficult emotions, she has an eating disorder. Disorders may take different forms: binge eating is one, when a woman eats too much or too often. Anorexia occurs when she eats too little or too infrequently. A third disorder is called bulimia, and a woman suffering from this disorder will induce vomiting to purge her system of food she has just eaten, whether or not she was bingeing.

While dentists do not treat eating disorders, they may treat the damage to dental health that results. Bulimia is a disorder that dentists may be the first to diagnose, because the self-induced nausea washes the teeth with acids that erode tooth enamel, as well as the dentin that lies below the enamel. The wear will be smooth and significant, depending on how often the patient purges her system.

Women suffering from anorexia rob their bodies of the needed nutrients to stay healthy. Because the mouth is full of sensitive tissue, dramatic changes to our body will affect our oral health. Loss of weight and bone density will change the shape of our mouth and jaw; lack of calcium and other vitamins will affect our teeth.