Do your dentures keep you from having dinner with an old friend?
Do your dentures hurt when you eat?
Do your dentures slip when you laugh?
Do your dentures only eat certain foods?
Do your dentures look like they are dentures?
There are solutions! For more than 15 years, Aesthetic Dentistry of Georgetown has been helping people end years of frustration with dentures and help to secure them with dental implant options. The reality is while the lack of confidence and comfort is a very real problem with conventional dentures, the problems go way deeper!
For most people, dentures force people to eat foods that are soft enough to get down, and those aren’t the same foods that keep you healthy. In fact, dentures wearers take 20% more medication for GI problems. Even worse, a fifth of people actually report being able to eat better without their teeth than with them! The longer the dentures are in place, the less bone and muscle you have, and the bite force for denture wearers drops from 300-1000psi down to 6 for long term wearers. This isn’t even enough force to bite a raw carrot, and so you are forced to eat the food you can rather than what you truly enjoy.
There are several great options for people who are wearing dentures. The simplest is to just create a new set of teeth that fits how your mouth works now. The shape of your jawbones and the surrounding muscles determine the function of your denture and those are changing all the time. If your dentures were made more than 5 years ago, odds are they don’t fit you like they should anymore and may actually be accelerating your bone loss. A new set of dentures would improve the fit and replace the worn down plastic teeth with a set of teeth that chew better and look better.
The problem with a traditional set of dentures is while the upper one can actually suction into place, the lower one will float all over and usually drives people crazy. The standard of care today is to use two or three implants and actually snap that lower denture in place. This holds the denture down, but the chewing is still supported by the jawbones and the denture still rests on the bone.
The next level of security is to use a few more implants to completely support the denture. With enough implants, even the upper denture can be shaped like a ‘U’ and you can get back the ability to taste everything and tell how hot your food is again!
The dentures that are most like teeth are fully implant supported and the teeth are actually screwed to the implants. With these, you brush your teeth in your mouth instead of in your hands and when you eat and talk and smile, they work just like natural teeth did!
There are a lot of options to make your dentures more comfortable and give you back the security and confidence in your smile. As always, we offer several complimentary sedation options to help you get through those long appointments, so if it’s the fear that’s keeping you back, be sure to ask us how to make the process easier for you. We are happy to set up a free consultation for you or a friend and talk about options ranging from snapped in dentures to a full set of teeth that are screwed in place.
If you or someone you know is frustrated because your teeth are keeping you from the life you want to live, give us a call at 512.819.9100 and set up a consultation to see what your options are to get back to living again! You can get your new smile for as little as $199 a month.
In health,
Your dental family!
PS: We offer a new patient gift with your New Patient Experience; your choice of a Sonicare or water flosser!