When you think about maintaining your health, what comes to mind first? Odds are you’re thinking about what you eat or how much you exercise. While both have a critical role to play in protecting your health, there’s a much simpler thing you can do to protect your health – smile.
Relieve Stress
If you’re like most people, there’s a good chance you found your stress levels elevated significantly lately. Between all the political insanity and the pandemic, it’s a surprise that more of us aren’t walking around with more gray hairs. As it turns out, smiling can help you reduce your stress. Smiling causes your brain to release serotonin and dopamine, which can help you feel happier and less stressed. Even if you don’t feel like smiling, faking it can be enough to get things moving. After a while you may find that you aren’t faking it after all.
Self-Confidence
Your smile can have a huge impact on your self-confidence. This, in turn, impacts your mental health. Having a smile you love to show off can help you boost your confidence, and having more self-confidence can boost your mental health. If you aren’t in love with your smile, don’t worry. An orthodontist can fix your smile by correcting bite issues. You can also get help with crooked teeth, stains, and bad breath. With proper dental care and oral hygiene practices, you’ll soon have a smile you can be proud of.
Physical Health Benefits
As if the mental health benefits weren’t enough, your smile helps protect your physical health as well. By protecting yourself from tooth loss, you protect your ability to eat healthily. This has major implications for your overall health. On top of that, proper dental hygiene helps reduce the bacteria in your mouth that are responsible for gum disease. If this bacteria gets into your bloodstream, it can cause your blood to thicken. Thicker blood increases your risk of developing blood clots and suffering a heart attack or stroke. If those benefits aren’t enough, maintaining healthy gums can also help pregnant women avoid premature labor.
Smiling plays a key role in maintaining your health. Though you might not give it as much consideration, it has a lot of power. Your smile can help you relieve stress, improve your self confidence, and protect your physical health as well. Learn to love your smile and take good care of it so you can enjoy all the benefits it can offer you.
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