Loose Teeth in Adults: How to Save Your Smile
A loose tooth is never a normal occurrence for adults, and an untreated loose tooth can quickly turn into a lost tooth–not to mention bone loss, misalignment, and other complications too.
When loose teeth in adults are treated quickly, you may be able to save your natural teeth and prevent future issues. Understanding how loose teeth occur in adults is the key to prevention. In this article, we break down all of the reasons you could experience loose teeth—and what to do as soon as you spot an issue.
Why Do My Adult Teeth Feel Loose?
Adult teeth become loose when the structures holding the tooth in place (including the bone, gums, roots, and ligaments) become weakened or damaged.
If your tooth is loose, you might notice that something is off about the way you normally speak or chew. You may also notice symptoms like pain or tenderness in the gums, bleeding, tooth discoloration, and gum recession. Eventually, you’ll be able to feel movement in the tooth with your finger or tongue.
Gum disease, teeth grinding, facial injury, and other health conditions are common causes of loose teeth in adults. Below, we go into details on each.
Gum Disease (Periodontitis)
Periodontitis, more commonly known as gum disease, is the leading cause of loose teeth in adults. Symptoms of this gum infection include bleeding gums, swelling, and gum recession, where the gums pull back from the teeth.
Gum disease typically starts as gingivitis, an infection of the gum tissue. Untreated, the infection can spread to the bone and other tissues that support the teeth. Periodontitis is a leading cause of bone loss, which leads to tooth mobility or looseness.
Tips for Avoiding Gum Disease
Staying on top of your dental hygiene is critical for preventing gum disease and keeping your teeth secure. Brushing twice a day and regular cleanings at the dentist’s office will help to remove the bacteria and plaque that lead to gum disease.
Teeth Grinding (Bruxism)
Grinding your teeth is another common cause of loose teeth. Often related to stress, clenching and grinding the teeth can cause undue pressure on both the teeth and the structures that keep them in place. Over time, this wear and tear can lead to those structures, particularly the ligaments, breaking down.
Tips for Avoiding Teeth Grindng
Because bruxism (another word for teeth grinding) is often associated with stress, managing the stressful influences in your life can help to keep your teeth intact. Deep breathing techniques, meditation, and lifestyle changes can help to address the root cause of your teeth grinding.
Night guards can also help. Worn during sleep, night guards don’t stop you from clenching or grinding your teeth, but they act as a barrier to help protect your teeth when you do.
Injury or Trauma
Impact to the mouth, whether through sports, a fall, or another accident, is not the most common cause of loose adult teeth, but it may be the most obvious.
Direct trauma to the teeth can knock a tooth out or cause it to become loose—though you may not notice it right away. Some injuries damage the ligaments around the tooth, which continue to weaken over time, leading to a loose tooth weeks or even months later.
Tips for Avoiding Injury to Teeth
While you can’t account for every injury-causing possibility, protecting your teeth during high-risk events is key. Wearing a mouthguard while playing sports, for example, can help to protect your teeth from blunt force injuries.
Systemic Health Conditions
In some cases, a loose tooth is a symptom of a larger, systemic issue. Medical concerns and events such as diabetes, osteoporosis, and pregnancy may affect your teeth and their structures, leading to gum disease, bone loss, and loose teeth.
Slow, prolonged healing is a common occurrence for patients with diabetes. This can make even routine infections, such as gingivitis, far more severe. Osteoporosis, which is a weakening of the bones, can impact the jawbone along with other parts of the body.
Many women also experience dental issues during pregnancy and menopause, both of which bring about extreme hormonal changes. Other systemic health conditions that may result in loose teeth include autoimmune disorders, Lyme disease, and heart disease. In all of these cases, treating the underlying health concern is critical to preventing the teeth from becoming loose.
What Happens If a Loose Tooth Is Left Untreated?
While a loose tooth is an annoyance at any age, loose teeth in adults can lead to other issues that may get worse if left untreated. Some of the complications of an untreated loose adult tooth include:
- Bone loss
- Misalignment of other teeth
- Higher risk of infection
- Potential need for extraction
- Difficulty chewing
- Speech problems
- Loss of confidence
Treatment Options for Loose Adult Teeth
Depending on the cause of your loose tooth, there are many treatment options available, from deep cleaning to treat gum disease at its source to bone grafting to increase the structures that support the tooth. Below, we’ve detailed four of the most common treatments.
Deep Cleaning & Root Planing
While regular cleanings are critical to help prevent gum disease from forming, deep cleaning and root planing and scaling can help to stop it from advancing. Scaling clears away bacteria and plaque both above and below the gum line, while root planing smooths out the roots to help the gums reattach. Together, they can reduce the presence of disease-causing bacteria and promote the health of the gums, allowing the tooth structures to heal and strengthen.
Dental Splinting
Used as both a temporary and permanent solution to loose teeth, dental splinting stabilizes loose teeth by bonding them to adjacent healthy teeth. This can reduce pain and help to prevent further damage to the teeth, even reducing the wear of bruxism. In some cases, dental splinting also buys some time, allowing patients to secure their natural teeth while they continue to identify and address the root cause of their loose teeth.
Bone Grafting
When bone loss—whether due to periodontitis, osteoporosis, or another condition—is the cause of tooth loss, bone grafting can help. Bone grafting introduces new bone material into the tooth site. The new material may be sourced from another part of the body, a donor, or a synthetic material. In any case, it helps to regenerate the bone mass around the tooth. Bone grafting can be used to stabilize a natural tooth or to prepare a patient for tooth replacement.
Tooth Replacement
While early treatment can help to save your natural teeth, sometimes it simply isn’t possible. In that case, tooth replacement can help to restore your smile, prevent further loss, and keep the rest of your teeth properly aligned. Permanent tooth replacement options include:
- Dental Implants, in which a prosthetic tooth is surgically inserted into the site of the missing tooth.
- Bridges, which use the surrounding teeth as an anchor point for artificial replacement teeth, much like dental splinting but without the use of the original tooth.
- All-on-4 Dental Implants, which allow for the efficient replacement of several missing teeth at once, with all of the prosthetic teeth anchored to a series of dental implants.
How to Prevent Loose Teeth
Keeping your teeth secure means looking after your dental and overall health. Depending on your lifestyle and your risk of tooth loss, there are many ways to prevent loose teeth in adults and the many related complications. These include:
- Basic oral hygiene: brush and floss your teeth twice daily to remove bacteria and plaque.
- Regular dental cleanings: a trip to the dentist once or twice a year can help to keep your teeth extra clean, while also giving them a chance to identify and address issues as they arise.
- Quit smoking: smoking is a significant risk factor for gum disease and for poor oral health.
- Manage health conditions such as diabetes: by managing the conditions that contribute to poor oral health, you can help your teeth stay secure.
- Wear a mouthguard: useful both for teeth grinders and sports enthusiasts, mouthguards prevent the trauma that comes from injury, clenching, and grinding.
- Ensure proper nutrition: choosing a diet rich in vitamin D and calcium can help to support good bone health, keeping your teeth’s structures good and strong.
When to See a Specialist
If you’re experiencing any mobility in your teeth, it’s important to reach out to a dentist or oral surgeon. Loose adult teeth are not normal, and early treatment may help you save your natural tooth.
If your tooth has already come out, or if it feels like it is about to, quick treatment is still critical. Addressing the issues that caused that tooth to become loose, and replacing the tooth quickly, will help to prevent further complications like bone loss, shifting of the other teeth, and more.
Schedule a consultation with an oral surgeon. Call or text 201-477-2667 or contact us online.
The team at Bergen Oral & Maxillofacial Surgery is skilled in a variety of tooth replacement options to help ensure that you keep the rest of your smile healthy and intact. Our skilled dual-degree surgeons are not just trusted by patients, but by Bergen County dentists, who have been referring their patients to our practice for more than 70 years.
With four locations in Franklin Lakes, Hackensack, Ridgewood, and Westwood, our team is here to help you understand your options to fix your adult loose teeth–and to get you back to a full, secure smile.
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FAQ: Loose Teeth in Adults
Want quick answers to your questions about loose teeth in adults? Below are the three most common questions we hear and our response.
Can a loose tooth tighten back up?
Depending on the severity of the looseness and the root cause, treatment of a loose tooth can help the structures around the tooth to strengthen, stabilizing the tooth. In some cases, a tooth cannot be saved, and tooth replacement options are best to restore your smile.
Can stress cause teeth to loosen?
Bruxism, also known as teeth grinding, is a common side effect of stress and a common cause of teeth loosening. So while stress doesn’t directly affect the security of your teeth, it can contribute to the behaviors that cause them to loosen.
How can you fix loose teeth in adults?
Depending on the cause and severity of the loose teeth, the options for how to fix loose teeth in adults include deep cleaning and dental scaling, dental splinting, and bone grafting. If the tooth cannot be saved, replacing the tooth with a dental implant can help to restore the smile and protect the remaining teeth.
