Is Vaping Bad For Your Teeth?

Does vaping stain teeth? Does it have the same negative impact on your teeth as smoking does? Can your dentist tell if you vape? VapeDirect.com investigates.

From the first glance, it would appear that vaping is not great for your oral health. Any excessive, repetitive action that you perform with your mouth is likely to cause eventual damage. There are few permanent pieces of evidence that link bad oral health with vaping, but there are feasible concepts which dentists are theorising as a result of the current popularity of vape devices.

One of the concerns raised by dentists is whether vaping can stain teeth. While it may not be as prominent as the staining caused by traditional tobacco smoking, vapers have reported discoloration on their teeth over time.

Moreover, the act of inhaling and exhaling vapor can also lead to a dry mouth, reducing the production of saliva, which plays a vital role in maintaining oral health. Saliva helps wash away food particles and neutralize acids, protecting teeth from decay and erosion.

We wanted to fully explore the vaping facts and myths around your oral health. Is vaping bad for your teeth and if so, how? Let’s discuss.

• Vaping can stain your teeth over time, but far less than cigarettes will.
• Vaping causes a dry mouth, which can impact gum health. Drink more water when you vape.
• Dry mouth means a lack of saliva to wash away food particles.
• Vaping won’t give you bad breath
• It may lead to gum disease at a progressively slower rate than smoking.
• Vaping is far less harmful to your dental health than smoking is – but it is not risk-free.

Does vaping give you bad breath? This is one of the first rumours we heard about vaping and dental health, and it can and can’t be true. Vaping different flavours will make your breath smell of those flavours. You might accidentally mix two flavours which create a bad smell. Vaping does not come with the horrendous smoky breath of a smoker. If you vape menthol e-liquids, your breath will be minty fresh.

Things are more complex than that, of course. If you vape frequently, your mouth becomes dry. A dry mouth isn’t fighting plaque in the same way as a moist mouth is. This dryness can cause cracks in the teeth that could cause bad breath. This dryness can cause bacterial build-up, known as xerostomia. When your mouth lacks sufficient saliva, bacteria can thrive, leading to the breakdown of food particles, which releases foul-smelling compounds.

This can result in an unpleasant odour in the breath. Furthermore, the flavoured e-liquids used in vaping can leave their scent in your mouth, and sometimes these flavours can mix with other factors, causing an undesirable smell.

To combat bad breath caused by vaping, maintaining proper oral hygiene is crucial.

Brushing your teeth at least twice a day and flossing regularly can help remove plaque and bacteria that cause bad breath. Additionally, using a mouthwash can provide extra protection against bacteria and leave your mouth feeling fresher. You should use your mouthwash in the middle of the afternoon to boost the effects of your toothpaste.

Staying hydrated is equally important; drinking water frequently helps keep your mouth moist and aids in flushing away odour-causing particles. Be sensible when vaping since it dehydrates you and the dehydration causes tooth damage. Drink water every few puffs to make sure you are staying healthy

Learning the difference between mouth to lung vaping and direct to lung vaping can help understand why e-cigarettes are less likely to yellow your teeth. However, it’s not just that bypass of holding vapour in your mouth that DTL vaping styles have that makes vaping better for your teeth than smoking. The chemicals in smoking turn your teeth yellow. These chemicals are noticeably absent from e-liquids.

Does vaping stain teeth? Dentists agree that vaping will not make your teeth yellower. Vaping does not contain the sticky yellow tar substance that we produce by burning tobacco. We can safely say that any chance of your teeth yellowing due to vaping is minimal. However, it is possible. There may be a yellow coloured e-liquid that gives you yellow teeth, but it won’t be in the same way that smoking does. You could equally have blue, purple, or green teeth. We will cross that bridge when we come to it.

Can dentists tell if you vape? While vaping may not cause the same visible yellow staining on teeth as smoking, dentists can still detect signs of vaping during oral examinations.

One common indicator is the presence of a dry mouth. As mentioned earlier, vaping can lead to reduced saliva production, which affects the overall oral health. Dentists may notice signs of dryness, such as cracked lips, tongue, or gum tissues, which can be associated with vaping habits.

Another possible giveaway is the presence of nicotine-related issues. Even though e-cigarettes don't contain the same harmful tar as tobacco cigarettes, they do often contain nicotine.

Dentists can recognize the telltale signs of nicotine use, such as nicotine stains on teeth and potential gum irritation caused by exposure to nicotine-containing vape liquids.

Vaping might stain your teeth but it will take far longer to do so than cigarettes will. Where a cigarette will stain your teeth yellow through continuous use within days, a vape device will take far longer to do so. Not only will your teeth stay whiter for longer when you vape instead of smoking, but any staining on your teeth will also have a lesser impact.

In short, vaping can stain your teeth but not in the way we associate with smokers.

Unlocking the mysteries of what vaping may or may not do to our health is a new challenge in clinical medicine and public health. What we know about smoking is that it does cause us gum disease. When we smoke over an extended period, our gums receive less oxygenated blood. They recede away from the base of the teeth. The more your gums recede, the more painful they will be. This receding means more bone becomes exposed, leading to greater sensitivity and increased tooth loss.

This process is a lot slower when you vape instead of smoking. You do have a loss of blood flow to the gums which can negatively affect your gums over time. However, this process will take far longer than it would if you were smoking. Smoking causes a lack of oxygen in the bloodstream overall, which leads to tooth decay, cum disease, and eventually tooth loss.

You can stave off the symptoms of gum disease by brushing twice a day, flossing every evening, and using mouthwash in the afternoons. You can chew sugar free gum to help produce saliva, or drink water throughout the day to keep your mouth hydrated.

According to Cancer Research UK, there is no good evidence that vaping causes cancer. They do cite concern because some flavourings found in e-cigarettes are not proven healthy ingredients. Nevertheless, they are far less harmful than the cancer-causing ingredients in cigarettes. It is this factor which makes them less harmful and that has seen the UK government promote their use in place of cigarettes and even in place of Nicotine Replacement Therapies.

Early on in the beginning stages of vaping devices, the media reported that vaping came with certain risks. One of these risks was a condition nicknamed ‘popcorn lung.’ The real name of the disease is bronchiolitis obliterans. This disease creates small pockets of damage in your airways that give you a persistent cough and breathing difficulties. The condition was linked early on to Diacetyl, which has been banned for use in vape juices in the UK for quite some time now.

Popcorn lung is not a cancer, although it is a painful disease. It was first recognised in factory workers who created popcorn, hence the nickname. The workers were breathing in the diacetyl and it made them unwell. The UK government banned diacetyl in 2016 as part of the EU Tobacco Products Directive. Not only has e-liquid containing diacetyl been illegal in Britain ever since, but Cancer Research UK cite no known cases of popcorn lung resulting from UK e-cigarette use. Put simply, popcorn lung from UK e-cigarettes was a scare tactic to keep people smoking.

Is vaping bad for your teeth? Not if you have a regular oral hygiene routine which combats it. Drink plenty of water as you vape to avoid dry mouth, too. Overall, then, vaping is not as bad for your teeth as our initial investigations made out. Nevertheless, there are three main ways in which vaping can affect your oral health.

Since vaping is a stimulant, dentists speculate that it can cause you to grind your teeth. Grinding your teeth, even in your sleep, is bad for the surface layers of the teeth. Repetitive grinding can damage the enamel and result in cavities. If you wake up in the morning with a pain in your jaw just under the ears, then you may have this problem.

As covered earlier, vaping can stain your teeth over time. The staining is far less than that caused by smoking, coffee, or red wine.

A third way that vaping might damage your oral health is through vasoconstriction. This is a long word for saying that the oxygen supply and blood flow to the gums experience restriction. This can lead to gum disease and contributes to poor dental health.

You can both find out more about vape products and check out our new vape kits products here. Each of our products is fully compliant with trading standards and are free of illegal chemicals sometimes used in the production of e-liquids in other countries. You can read more about your vape liquids on our blog and you can shop for them in our online store.

If you want to make the switch from cigarette smoking to something better for your teeth, then switching to a vape device is a clever idea. You will retain your nicotine level while keeping that feeling of taking a drag on a cigarette. You feel like you are puffing, but you are eliminating many of the cancerous chemicals, most of the bad breath, and some of the dehydration that is bad for your teeth. You can even work your way down to vaping without nicotine, eventually weaning yourself off it altogether.

If you want to quit smoking through a vape device, you can read more about this on our blog. You can also visit the NHS website to learn more about the benefits of vape devices for ex-smokers. If you are still at a loss for information, visit us at our Stacey Bushes or Milton Keynes stores.

Our conclusion can only be that vaping is worse for your teeth than not vaping, but far better for your teeth than smoking. Although vaping dries out the mouth and lowers the blood oxygen levels of your gums, it doesn’t directly cause your teeth to stain or decay. In fact, you could argue that vaping is better for your teeth than giving in to your sweet tooth and eating the desserts, fruits, sodas, and sweets, which vape juice flavours give you access to.

If you are vaping regularly, maintain good oral health and drink more water than usual, the combination of these things should keep your mouth as fresh as possible throughout the day. Good oral hygiene will stave off gum disease even if you are a smoker, so practice cleaning your teeth and gums regularly for the best results.

As to whether or not your dentist can tell if you vape, if you keep up that routine they might never notice at all. We think that gives an in-depth answer as to vaping being good or bad for your teeth.