Your smile is how you greet the world. Smiling benefits everything from your mental health to your blood pressure, yet so many of us do everything we can to hide our smiles. Have you ever found yourself dreading a family event because you don’t want to show your teeth in pictures? Have you found yourself suppressing a laugh so friends can’t see ugly, decades-old dental work? You deserve a smile you love, and we’re here to help. Read on for some facts about smiling that we hope will help boost your mood!
Even a Fake Smile Is Good for Your Mental Health
There’s no arguing that we feel great after a good giggle session or seeing something that makes us smile. Smiling and laughing are proven to reduce stress hormones like cortisol in the body and release feel-good chemicals like endorphins. But is it the smiling that’s doing all that mental-health-boosting work, or is it being happy in the first place that makes us smile?
You may or may not remember that popular song from the early 2000’s that told us to “smile like you mean it.” In all honesty, that’s not bad advice. Just as genuine smiling and laughing happen with events that make us feel happy, a fake smile benefits your mental health the same way! Engaging the muscles involved in smiling (even when you don’t really feel like it) can trigger the same signals as a spontaneous smile, helping to suppress stress and boost your mood.
With increased frequency, this neurological pathway becomes stronger and stronger, meaning your body will start to find reasons to make you smile more once you establish a good smiling habit. This is one of those weird times when “fake it till you make it” really works.
That being said, there is a trick to it. You have to actually smile like you mean it. A genuine smile involves the muscles around your eyes and cheekbones, not just your lips and lower face. There has been a ton of research about the so-called Duchenne smile, and the conclusion seems to be that the magic happens in those muscles higher in your face. If you want to get the benefits of smiling from a fake smile, make it convincing!
(And if you want to get really brave, you can even try fake laughing with some friends. Weirdly, it works the same way!)
Smiling Benefits Your Social Wellness
One of the most significant effects your smile can have on your life and wellbeing is its impact on your social life. Humans are hard-wired to respond to the emotional signals of the people around us. Have you ever heard someone’s laugh and you start laughing, too, even if you didn’t hear the joke?
Mirror neurons control the way we respond to others by helping us match the emotions we see around us. The psychology of smiling not only improves your mental wellbeing but extends to the people around you. People who smile frequently are generally perceived as warm, approachable, kind, trustworthy, and competent—as long as it’s that genuine smile we talked about earlier.
If one of the benefits of smiling is that it improves our social wellness, we need to be aware that the reverse it true here, too. Reluctance to smile or suppressing your smile or your laugh (maybe in an attempt to hide your teeth) so that it can’t reach your eyes can make others think you’re grumpy or shy, even when you’re not.
Social smiling is especially important in your romantic life. Smiling and laughing with confidence communicates a strong, secure personality and great sense of humor, which shows up on almost every list of what people look for in a partner.
Your Smile Can Impact Your Career
As an extension of your social wellbeing, smiling benefits your career prospects as well. Reluctance to smile can impact your confidence and make you less likely to pursue opportunities. Likewise, problems with your teeth that show when you smile, especially issues like broken and missing teeth, can make others see you as less intelligent or competent. While we agree that this is an unfair reality, it’s a subconscious bias that can have serious consequences for your career.
Smiling Benefits Physical Health
Just like the relationship between smiling and happiness goes both ways, the link between smiling and physical health does, too. While the benefits of smiling for stress reduction and mental health are incredibly significant, those feel-good hormones do amazing work for your body. With lower levels of cortisol, you’ll enjoy lower blood pressure and a slower pulse rate. Smiling has also been shown to strengthen your immune system and increase endurance during strenuous tasks.
Weirdly, one of the benefits of smiling is pain control! While smiling may be the last thing on your mind when you’re in pain, engaging that full-face smile can help decrease your pain response while increasing your pain threshold, both of which help you feel less discomfort.
You Deserve to Feel Great About Your Smile
All this talk about the benefits of smiling is well and good, but for many patients it feels like a fantasy. For patients with dental health problems, you may feel like letting anyone see your teeth is the last thing in the world you want to do. Missing, broken, discolored, decayed, crooked, and failing teeth can steal your smile.
We understand how overwhelming and discouraging it can be to feel embarrassed or ashamed of your teeth. Fortunately, your dream smile can be a reality. Whether you need tooth whitening, dental veneers, or full mouth reconstruction, our cosmetic dental office in Orlando, FL can help rejuvenate your smile so you can reclaim your confidence.
Even better, all the things that can help you feel confident in your smile—strong, healthy teeth and gums, to be precise—benefit your overall health. A full set of strong, functional teeth can help prevent nutritional deficiencies frequently seen in patients with missing and failing teeth and ill-fitting dentures. Preventing gum disease and dental health problems likewise protects your entire body, especially heart health.
At Lake Baldwin Dental, our mission is to improve your quality of life through compassionate dental care. We want to do whatever it takes to get you smiling again! If you’re uncomfortable with your smile, schedule your consultation or new patient exam at our dental office in Baldwin Park, FL today to find out how we can help!
