There are a lot of ways to use Dental Implants to improve the quality of your life and support your health. One of the most important ways is to help to secure a set of dentures. For many, moving to dentures instead of their own teeth feels like a relief because they are finally finished with having trouble with their teeth. To a certain extent, this is true, however, dentures are not without their own sets of frustrations!
Some alarming statistics are that people with dentures take more than 20% more medications for GI and digestive issues. Unfortunately, the younger you are when you get dentures, the worse the problem is! Under your dentures, there is a ridge of bone that is used to support your denture teeth. The problem is that to the body, bone is only there to support the roots of your teeth, and once those are gone your body doesn’t realize it needs that bone anymore. Over the course of the next few years, not a lot happens, but from year 5 to 15 in dentures, there is a dramatic loss of bone in every dimension and that results in the dentures being worse for you than the teeth were!
As that bone is lost, typically the teeth fit worse every year and the worse the dentures fit, the faster the bone is dissolved away. This downward spiral leads to using denture glue to hope to keep the dentures stable enough to use, but the reality is the glue doesn’t really work. The average bite force plummets from 250 – 1000 psi down to less than 10 – meaning that you can’t even bite things like carrots or broccoli or an apple. Being forced to eat softer foods is the first step toward the increased digestive issues and poorer health. It isn’t uncommon to find people who use one set for smiling and pictures and social events, and another for eating. More shocking, one person in five reports being able to eat better without their dentures than with!!
As bad as dentures can be, there is hope. Even with something as simple as a couple implants placed in lower jaw with snaps to snap your denture onto, life with those dentures is dramatically better! For the vast majority of people, a conventional upper denture and a lower denture that is snapped in place with two or three implants is an incredibly comfortable and stable long-term solution. And statistically, their bite force jumps back up from about 5-6 psi to nearly 200psi, allowing them to eat the foods they enjoy again!
Another amazing implant solution is to change the shape of the upper denture. A traditional upper denture covers the entire roof of your mouth and when that’s covered with acrylic, you also lose a significant amount of taste, smell, and temperature awareness. Initially, people burn their throats on coffee and soup and while they can learn to tell how hot things are again, the taste and smell never really come back unless or until you uncover the roof of the mouth. With a series of implants on the top, the denture can be shaped like a row of teeth and we can get rid of that big plate of acrylic! Not everyone needs to do this, but we have yet to meet someone who has who wasn’t thrilled with the improvement!
Both of these opportunities will change how life feels and get you back to having a smile you can be confident to use… to be able to laugh and enjoy friends again without having to worry about whether your teeth will slip loose or fall out. It is a wonderful experience to be able to count on your teeth again! However, there is another option for you too.
The more like regular teeth we can make the denture, the better it works and feels. With only a few more implants, it is possible to replace the removable dentures with a set of teeth that are screwed to the implants and is as secure as natural teeth again! As you would imagine, the more involved the solution is, the more of an investment it is, but to be able to once again have a set of teeth that is always there is an incredible thing indeed!
If you are frustrated with dentures, set up a consultation and talk to us about solutions. You can enjoy life without the worry about your teeth falling out or looking bad in photos. All too often we see people fade out of enjoying life because their teeth embarrass them, and that simply doesn’t need to happen anymore! We would be happy to set up a complimentary consultation to help you get answers about how dental implants can give you back your smile. With a beautiful smile stabilized and secured with dental implants, you can once again go out and live life like you are meant to!