A key to good stomach and overall health starts with maintaining proper oral hygiene. Lack of oral hygiene puts you at risk of life-threatening conditions such as Stomatitis. If you’re one of those individuals who are heavy smokers or hardcore nicotine addicts, well congratulations for adding more risk and making your condition utterly complicated. As most of you may have already guessed by its name, Stomatitis has nothing to do with your stomach health.
What is Stomatitis?
Stomatitis is an inflammation caused in the interior walls of the mouth. It can affect all parts of the mouth including cheeks, lips, gums, tongue and the palates. Stomatitis can be identified by symptoms like swelling on the affected areas inside the mouth and redness. It can cause excruciating pain and severe discomfort and in some severe cases can cause bleeding. There are mainly three types of Stomatitis that mostly affect a number of individuals - Aphthous Stomatitis, Herpes Stomatitis and Nicotine Stomatitis.
Are you wondering how nicotine can trigger Stomatitis? Nicotine Stomatitis is distinctive from other types of Stomatitis as it widely affects just the upper palate of the mouth and the primary cause of this condition is heavy smoking. The other forms of Stomatitis have other different reasons. The HSV-1 virus causes herpes Stomatitis or known as cold sores, and Aphthous Stomatitis has many different causes including poor dental hygiene and allergic reactions.
Cause, Risk, and Signs of Nicotine Stomatitis
The most significant cause of developing this condition is if you’re a chronic vape, cigarette or pipe smoker. If you think reverse smoking is fun and uber cool when trying it with your friends, within no time you’ll find yourself suffering from this condition due to the intense nicotine strength. Also, letting your mouth exposed to high concentration of heat can severely damage the roof of the mouth. Nicotine Stomatitis is more likely to be caused due to heat and chemicals present in a burning tobacco product, and it’s nicotine strength. Smokers who use pipes and cigars are at a higher risk of developing this deadly condition.
Since smoking trends have tend to change and more number of people smoke cigarettes or use vapes with vape juice inside. One of the studies found that nearly 29.6% of all smokers suffered from nicotine Stomatitis, but nearly more than half (60% to be precise ) of pipe smokers suffered from this condition.
If you’re experiencing any of these signs, you may want to consult your physician and start the required medications.
- White or red dots begin to show up when the salivary glands are inflamed.
- Skin of the upper palate is covered with gray or white patches.
Prevention and Treatment
One of the best ways to avoid nicotine Stomatitis is to ditch your cigarettes and your hardcore addictive smoking habits high in nicotine strength. Individuals who put on dentures and smoke have fewer chances to develop this oral condition underneath the area covered by the dentures, but they’re likely to develop in the parts of the mouth that aren’t covered.
If you are concerned about developing nicotine Stomatitis in the near future due to your awful habits then you should check the inside of your mouth regularly by a dentist of your general physician not only to detect nicotine Stomatitis but to check if you have any other major conditions as well.