If You Use Chewing Tobacco, We Urge You To Stop!

Do you use smokeless tobacco because cowboys in Western movies look cool when they use it? Or maybe you notice popular pro baseball players with wads in their mouths. Your reasons may vary, but one thing is for sure: It’s terrible for your oral and overall health. 

Smokeless tobacco—also known as chewing tobacco, chaw, dip and snuff—is just overall gross, and everyone at the office of Valstad Dental encourages you to give it up. All of us here want you to have the best oral health possible. In addition to our first-class, comprehensive dental care, we have a welcoming, patient-focused environment in which each patient will feel at ease.

Some chewing tobacco companies say their products are “safer” or “healthier” than cigarettes, but they’re very wrong. Tobacco in any form is a dangerous substance. Chewing it is a significant contributor to gum disease, which makes your gums inflamed, infected and, perhaps, bleed when you brush. You could lose teeth, enamel, oral tissue and bone. 

We guarantee that you don’t want oral cancer. It usually crops on the lower lip, tongue, inner cheeks and floor of the mouth. It frequently starts off looking like a common mouth sore, and you may not give it a second thought. But this “sore” won’t go away after a few days or a week. You’ll likely need surgery and radiation. Extreme cases require removing some of your jawbone. Chaw can also spark cancer of the pancreas, esophagus and other organs. 

Your social life is also at stake. Nobody wants to have an up-close-and-personal conversation with someone whose breath reeks of tobacco and whose teeth have yellow and brown stains. And the constant need to expectorate? Who wants to look at that?  

So now that we’ve convinced you to quit, take some of these suggestions to complete your journey. 

• Use nicotine replacement therapy products you can get from your doctor or over the counter. 
• Attend support groups.
• See an addiction counselor.
• Make use of the online resources SmokeFree.Gov and CDC.Gov/Quit.
• Have faith in yourself that you can do it!

The office of Valstad Dental has sophisticated and leading-edge equipment that will give us an overall view of every aspect of your dental health. We set up all of our patients for a lifetime of excellent oral health. Please don’t hesitate to contact us for an appointment.