My Dentist Told Me Today

Bone erosion can also be a heredity issue...I got the same problem you mentioned from my 97 year old father...I'm 75 and at this point in time...don't give a rat's ass...It is what it is, and I'm not giving up the only damn thing I can still enjoy.

Mother, my dentist told me to stop smoking a pipe because of the damage I was doing to my mouth. I mistakenly made a comment that I smoked a pipe and she had been my dentist for years. I went back 6 months later and mentioned three times that I quit smoking and miraculously the damage to my mouth disappeared. In reality I started smoking more. Go figure.

Use a water pic daily to mitigate and even reverse this problem. Buy some cheap mouthwash to mix with the water you put in it. Works wonders.

Buy a waterpik. Use it twice a day, mixing 20 to 30% mouthwash in the water. That should arrest the problem, and possibly reduce the pockets.
EDIT: Just saw that someone else already mentioned this. Works for me. Should work for you.

The pressure washer for teeth and gums, the Waterpik, can indeed help your gums, can't help bone loss but, you're not there quite yet. I'm lucky enough to have a dentist who is "anal" about saving teeth where possible. Many dentists think first of pulling and inserting an implant. I prefer my dentist's philosophy even if he's more expensive than others.

I’ve had chronic sinusitis for most of my life. About ten years ago, I had sinus surgery and it helped a lot, but didn’t cure the problem. I would still get blocked sinuses and couldn’t always breath freely through my nose. Then I started smoking a pipe and the problems vanished. I’m fairly certain it’s the vasoconstrictor action that’s helping me. If I go more that a few days without smoking, the problems begin to return.

The pressure washer for teeth and gums, the Waterpik, can indeed help your gums, can't help bone loss

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Maintaining healthy gums and avoiding the pockets will indeed help with the bone loss. The gums protect those bones.

I also recommend using a soft toothbrush lightly along your gum line. It does wonders combined with regular flossing to improve your overall oral health.

Ask 10 dentists and they will tell you 10 different things. my dentist, for example, has nothing against pipe smoking, he just says that the deposits on my teeth are stickier and harder to remove due to the tobacco, and that I should be careful not to make a permanent habit out of clenching as it can deform gums ... ok, whatever.

My dentist's sole concern with smoking has to do with pipe smoking and its that clenching can negatively affect bite. Otherwise he is a trooper. Love the guy. He's 70 and plays bass in a salsa band in Portland.

Your age may play into this discussion a little bit. If you were 70+ and your dentist warned you about teeth falling out, you might not care. If you are in your 20s or 30s you might.
My dentist has never asked about pipe smoking and I've never told them. At 1 bowl a month I'm hardly a pipe smoker at all actually. Now coffee staining my teeth, well that's another story.

Like woods I've been prone to sinusitis for a long time, & it probably did have some effect on my tooth loss, along with genetics. My dad (oddly a dentist himself) had bridgework while in his 40s, & so did I. I laid the pipe down at the time that I had to have my remaining teeth pulled for full dentures (NOT fun, definitely don't recommend it as a pastime) 20-some ago, but picked it up again a year or so back. Haven't had any bone mass reduction problems that I know of.
Bill

The pockets could be entirely unrelated to your smoking or exacerbated by it. Flossing, regular 2-minute brushing, and waterpik usage can reverse this. You want to avoid debridement, which I understand is painful and expensive.

I've been having an ongoing sinus problem (right side) since at least AD 2014. It got worse in the winter of AD 2015, and I suspect starting to do snuff might have if not triggered it, at least complicated it. Then again, I wasn't heavy into snuff—no more than 5 pinches a day, if not less. Still, since the snuff goes wherever the mucus carries it, I have ever since wondered if I didn't cause the problem myself. Then again, who's to know beforehand?
Said sinus problem caused me to undergo two especialised endodontics surgeries (apicoectomy), and still the problem did not resolve. It started affecting my hearing, and caused me to be disqualified from joining the Canadian Royal Navy (I seem to hear fine, maybe a bit too well, but the audiogram shewed I have problems with the high frequencies). When the problem recrudesced, the especialist sent me back to the regular dentist to have the tooth extracted. Guess what? That didn't fix the problem. Of course, at this time (February AD 2016) I was no longer taking snuff (OK, I took the sporadic pinch, but I really mean sporadic—I still have over 95% of the snuff I got in early 2015), and I wasn't smoking pipes by any means: I started pipe smoking in September AD 2017, and I am not a regular smoker. Heck, I haven't touched my pipe in about three weeks (though I've smoked cigars [Romeo & Julieta Minis] every other day, save for weekends).
My sinus problem has gotten to the point that the lymph nodes under my right ear are inflamed, to the point even eating and speaking can be painful. Doctors are still clueless, but I doubt it has anything to do with tobacco.
Unfortunately, tobacco is the easy way out nowadays for doctors to avoid their responsibility of truly investigating the issues affecting their patients. Worse, you can't get an objective answer or assessment from them anymore. I see every now and then people posting "pipe smoking and health" questions here and there's always someone (or several) telling them to consult their doctors. :roll: I don't think that's sound advice anymore.

Olkofri, I'm not a doctor, and I haven't played one on TV for quite a few years, but my advice to you is to see an ENT and get an MRI of your sinuses. And lay off the snuff, completely.