Is it just people on meth tend to neglect dental care and don’t floss/brush? Or is there actually a chemical in meth that causes your teeth to go bad?
In: 73
Dentist here. Mainly the first, people on meth have terrible hygiene; however, meth also screws with salivary glands reducing the saliva that acts as natural lubricant keeping food from sticking to your teeth. This along with lack of brushing becomes the perfect storm to having caries run rampant and create decay is the most complicated areas of the the teeth to fix (the neck of the tooth). We recently had a patient in his mid 20s that needed either crowns/root canals on every tooth or full mouth extractions with full upper and lower dentures.
Sources:
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/16355653/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6100769/
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