Deciding to stop smoking is probably one of the best decisions you can make for your health, and your dentist can increase your chances of success hugely. With the help of your dentist in Sutton, smoking cessation will play a key role in protecting your oral and overall health.

At Benhill Dental Practice, our dentists help patients quit smoking by offering personal support and encouragement. Our dentists can also prescribe stop-smoking medications where helpful, and will happily explain the oral and overall health benefits of quitting smoking as soon as possible.

Can I do it alone?

It may come as a surprise to hear, but four out of 10 smokers will attempt to quit their smoking habit during the course of a year, but the withdrawal symptoms of nicotine can be so severe that many will fail on their first attempt and will return to their previous smoking habits.

Nicotine addiction involves both psychological and physical factors. This means that smoking cessation intervention will require a systematic approach in order to succeed. This involves assessing our patients’ readiness, motivating their health behaviour changes and developing a co-operative treatment plan.

How can a dentist help?

We believe our dentists are in a unique position to intervene early on because they can literally see the damage smoking can do to the mouth and surrounding areas. Smoking is associated with mouth cancer and our dentists can detect early changes, such as lesions, that may appear because of oral cancers.

As experts in oral health, our highly trained dentists can easily spot the damage tobacco does to the mouth and teeth. Smokers will also tend to suffer from bad breath, stained teeth and even a dry mouth.

People who smoke are also three times more likely than non-smokers to have severe gum disease. Fortunately, oral diseases associated with smoking are more obvious to the eye than other conditions. This can give our dentists an advantage over other health-care professionals in identifying patients who could be at risk because of smoking, and puts us in a good position to encourage the conversation about quitting this deadly habit.