A smile speaks a thousand words. It helps you greet your loved ones, exude confidence, and express pleasure. To put your best foot forward, you may be hoping to improve your smile.
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Many people want to brighten and improve the appearance of their smiles to build connections with others, enhance romantic interactions, and even help their careers! This article will discuss why a great smile is beneficial - and how to get your best smile ever.
3 Reasons to Improve Your Smile
When you smile, your body undergoes an incredible process involving the brain, nerves, hormones. Hormones are responsible for the pleasant feeling you experience when you smile. Your smile sends a signal from your nerves to the brain and triggers the release of feel-good hormones, including endorphins, serotonin, and dopamine.
Each of these hormones provides a mood-enhancing effect. For example, endorphins and dopamine are responsible for feelings of positivity, while serotonin helps mood regulation. All three of these hormones working in unison help you to feel good and relax. This creates a feedback loop - as you smile, your mood improves, and as your mood improves, you smile! In a nutshell, you can fake it ‘til you make it when smiling.
In addition to feeling great, smiling can help you in social interactions and even your career by building confidence and trust. For these reasons, you may want to improve your smile to be more apt to show it off!
You can also check out this video for tips for a better smile.
1. Easier to Make Friends
Studies have shown that smiling makes people more attractive. Smiling can even make others assume we have positive personality traits - like trustworthiness, optimism, and kindness. As a result, we’re more likely to seek out smiling folks as friends. So if you’re hoping to make new pals at a social gathering, remember to smile!
In addition to making an excellent first impression, smiling also helps us take the edge off social awkwardness in new situations. As discussed before, you will feel more joyful and at ease, which will lead to others feeling more at ease with you.
2. An Essential Skill in Flirting
A good smile is a surefire sign that someone may feel interested in you, and vice versa! If you’re in the dating scene, your smile is one of your most powerful assets to flirt and build connections with. In addition to signaling your interest, smiling has been shown to convey confidence.
In dating studies, confidence is a strong predictor of the overall attractiveness of potential partners. So, if you’re hoping to up your flirting game and connect with potential partners, enhancing your confidence with an improved smile could be a great strategy!
3. Professional Advantages of a Great Smile
As discussed previously, a great smile conveys confidence, an essential trait in the professional world. As an employee, you’ll represent the company you work for, so having confidence and charisma is vital. In interviews and professional settings, smiling is a surefire way to show that you are confident, competent, and able to present yourself professionally.
5 Tips and Tricks to Smile Better
Ready to smile better? Here are several tips and tricks to help improve your grin and smile confidently!
1. Come Across as Natural
While you might not be a ‘natural’ smiler, forcing a smile may do more harm than good. Learning to recognize the differences between a genuine smile and a fake smile will help you smile more naturally and convey the warmth and confidence that comes with it.
When you smile naturally, your eyes will close, smile lines or crow’s feet will appear around the eyes, and the rest of your body language will generally be at ease. When fake smiling, you may smile very widely, displaying bottom and top teeth, and have a tense posture without ‘smiling eyes.’
2. Take Care of Your Gums
Great smiles aren’t just pearly whites! Your gums are a vital part of your smile. Caring for your gums will reduce inflammation, puffiness, and redness to set the stage for your bright smile.
For optimal gum health, be sure to follow a proper oral hygiene routine by:
- Brushing twice daily with a soft-bristle brush and fluoride toothpaste.
- Brushing gently but thoroughly, paying attention to the hard-to-reach spaces at the gum line.
- Flossing thoroughly to remove debris and plaque from the gum line and between teeth. Wiggle floss down the side of teeth into the gumline and then pull up gently.
- Visiting your dentist for regular cleanings and checkups, as they will be able to observe your gum health and remove any plaque build-up.
3. Learn Different Types of Smiles
Not all smiles are created equally. Of course, a flirtatious smile is different than a smile you’ll use for professional settings. Since different kinds of smiles are ideal for other occasions, learning which to convey at the right time will help you be more confident.
You may display a broad, open-mouth smile when experiencing genuine joy and humor, whereas a ‘brave-faced’ smile after experiencing disappointment is also common.
4. Visit Your Dentist Regularly
Your dentist is your partner in enhancing your smile. Proper professional diagnosis and treatment of oral health issues can reduce overall stress about smiling, boost body-wide health and set you up for success with a better smile. So be sure to visit your dentist for regular oral checkups.
During these visits, your dentist will:
- Examine your teeth, noting any reparative work that needs to be done to preserve the integrity of your smile.
- Deep clean your teeth with professional-grade products and tools, removing built-up plaque and polishing with fluoride.
- Examine your gumline, making notes of gum recession over time. Your dentist will be able to note pockets of gum spacing and help you to restore gum health.
- Recommend procedures, products, and a regimen to enhance your dental health.
5. Whiten Your Teeth
We all want a bright white smile. Radiant, dazzling teeth will ‘wow’ whoever you’re sharing your smile with - luckily, whitening your teeth is easy! There are plenty of teeth whitening products to choose from, ranging from at-home treatments that can be applied in minutes to professional treatments available only from the dental office.
When choosing a whitening treatment, you may want to consider the following factors:
- Your smile goals. If you like your current shade and simply want to brighten your enamel or maintain your current shade slightly, consider applying a quick coat of whitening gel via a whitening pen after coffee or happy hour to prevent stains and keep your pearly whites white! However, if you aim to brighten your smile by several shades dramatically, consider an advanced whitening treatment like the GLO Teeth Whitening Devices, which pairs whitening gel with an illuminating heat mouthpiece to brighten enamel by up to 12 shades.
- Your schedule and time demand. For example, do you want a treatment that takes just 5 minutes, but will take longer to whiten dramatically? Or would you prefer a week-long intensive treatment that brightens by several shades?
- Your enamel sensitivity. If you feel pain or sensitivity when eating or drinking hot or cold foods and drinks, you’ll likely want to find a sensitivity-free formula to protect your enamel from damage.
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