Signs and symptoms of toothlessness
- Support the lips and cheeks, providing for a fuller, more aesthetically pleasing appearance
- Maintain an individual's vertical dimension of occlusion
- Allow for the proper pronunciation of various sounds, along with the tongue and lips
- Preserve and maintain the height of the alveolar ridge
- Cut, grind, and otherwise chew food

Facial support and aesthetics
- The absence of teeth causes the cheeks to exhibit a sunken-in appearance and wrinkle lines to form at the commissures
- The anterior teeth support the lips and provide certain aesthetic features, such as an acute nasiolabial angle
- Loss of muscle tone and skin elasticity due to old age exacerbates the sunken-in appearance
- The tongue tends to broaden out in the absence of teeth, making it difficult to fabricate dentures
- Prosthetic teeth help restore the natural appearance of the mouth and support the lips

Vertical dimension of occlusion
- The loss of teeth leads to a decrease in the vertical dimension of occlusion
- Without teeth, the mouth tends to overclose, causing a sunken-in appearance of the cheeks
- Overclosure may result in altered tone and elasticity of the mandible and TMJ
- The excessive cheek than needed contributes to the sunken-in appearance
- Treating the overclosure is essential to maintain the proper vertical dimension of occlusion

Pronunciation
- Teeth play a major role in speech, allowing proper pronunciation of certain sounds
- Consonant sounds like 't,' 'd,' 's,' 'z,' 'f,' and 'v' require tooth-to-tooth contact
- Sounds like 't,' 'd,' 's,' 'z,' 'f,' and 'v' require tongue-to-tooth contact
- Fricatives like 'f' and 'v' are achieved through lip-to-tooth contact
- Edentulous individuals find it difficult to enunciate these sounds properly

Preservation of alveolar ridge height
- Alveolar ridges are columns of bone that surround and anchor the teeth
- When teeth are absent, the alveolar bone slowly resorbs
- Resorption occurs in the vertical, anterioposterior, and faciolingual dimensions
- Pressure on the bone exacerbates resorption, affecting ridge width
- Retaining tooth roots or using implants can help decrease bone loss and maintain ridge shape

Toothlessness (Wikipedia)

Toothlessness or edentulism is the condition of having no teeth. In organisms that naturally have teeth, it is the result of tooth loss. Organisms that never possessed teeth can also be described as edentulous. Examples are the members of the former zoological classification order of Edentata, which included anteaters and sloths, as they possess no anterior teeth and no or poorly developed posterior teeth.

In naturally dentate species, edentulism is more than just the simple presence or absence of teeth. It is biochemically complex because the teeth, jaws, and oral mucosa are dynamic (changing over time). Processes such as bone remodeling (loss and gain of bone tissue) in the jaws and inflammation of soft tissue in response to the oral microbiota are clinically important for edentulous people. For example, bone resorption in the jaw is frequently how the teeth were able to detach in the first place. The jaw in an edentulous area undergoes further resorption even after the teeth are gone; and the insertion of dental implants can elicit new bone formation, leading to osseointegration. Meanwhile, bacteria and yeasts of the oral cavity and the immune system of their host create an immensely complicated and constantly changing interplay that presents clinically as gingivitis, caries, stomatitis, and other periodontal pathology.