All too often we see damage to the teeth and gums that were caused by self-inflicted means. One of the worst ways to damage your teeth and gums is to stick a wad of chewing tobacco in your mouth everyday. Here are three ways that chewing tobacco can cause you all sorts of problems.

1. Dulled Sense of Taste and Smell
The wide array of synthetic chemicals that is contained in chewing tobacco can disrupt one’s sense of taste and smell. Which is kind of brutal seeing as how eating stuff is one of the best things in life.

2. Increased Tooth Decay
Chewing tobacco actually contains a decent amount of sugar, and sugar obviously leads to increased enamel damage. Especially because chewer’s will usually leave the sugar-containing chew pressed against their teeth for extended periods of time.

3. Slowed Healing After Extraction or Other Surgery
The irritating agents in chewing tobacco compromises the body’s ability to properly heal.

4. Gum Recession
Having chewing tobacco grind against your gums all day causes constant irritation. The effect is permanent damage to your gums and the surrounding bone. If your gums recede too much, your teeth can literally fall out.

5. Oral Cancer:
Chewing tobacco has 28-cancer causing agents. As a result of this, you are constantly drenching your entire mouth in a slurry of carcinogenic poison. Chewing tobacco use is also strongly associated with leukoplakia – a precancerous lesion of the soft tissue in the mouth that looks like a white patch or plaque that cannot be scraped off. Sadly, this can result in cancer of the oral cavity and pretty much everything within the vicinity of your mouth.