Dr. Leedia Riman explains how menopause affects your mouth and teeth. About 20% of menopausal women experience burning mouth syndrome or tingling on the tongue. Dropping estrogen impairs collagen repair in the mouth and accelerates bone loss around teeth, leading to unexpected early tooth loss and gum recession.
I want to talk about how women's mouths change going through perimenopause and menopause, and what specific symptoms they should pay attention to. Things like burning mouth syndrome or tingliness in your tongue. 20% of menopausal women experience that to a certain degree. Estrogen is neuroprotective. We need it for our neurons to function properly. Same thing in our mouth. So that burning tongue is due to that decline of the estrogen. And also it has been associated with B vitamin deficiency. Then we look at our mucosa, also lined with estrogen receptors. So when that drops, estrogen modulates the ability for two things, your collagen, to repair your mucosa and for your bone, for your osteoclasts to work in balance. A lot of women in perimenopause and menopause come in with all of a sudden extreme bone loss, especially in the front area of the teeth. Early tooth loss of teeth that never gave them a problem or much recession, that is causing them a lot of pain because there's nerve exposure in your root. All of that, a huge modulation of it is estrogen. And the drop of estrogen, estrogen.
She Used to Crash Every Afternoon — Here's What Fixed It | The Wardrobe Consultant
