If you’re missing most or all of your teeth, dentures are one of the most common ways to replace them. They’re cost-effective, easy to maintain, and offer a level of realism that can completely restore any confidence you lost along with your teeth.
However, you might have heard that eating with dentures can be a little bit difficult. You may therefore wonder whether your new prosthetic could impact your overall nutrition. Here’s what you should know about this issue and how you can address it.
Will Dentures Affect the Quality of my Nutrition?
Traditional full dentures are designed to adhere to the gums entirely via suction. This is important, as it makes it possible to secure your prosthetic in place without any existing teeth to attach to, and it’s part of what makes this treatment so popular.
However, it also means that dentures tend to offer a weaker bite than you might get from other methods of tooth replacement. Studies show that this can have a measurable impact on the quality of denture patients’ diet.
Recent research from the Regenstrief and IU School of Dentistry Dental Informatics studied nutrition markers in more than 10,000 people and found that those who had dentures saw a marked decline in the quality of their diet. If this research is to be believed, both dentists and patients may need to re-evaluate the way that people with prosthetics handle their diet.
What Can Be Done?
If you have dentures, you might need to consult with a dietician if you want to ensure that you’re eating what you should. They’ll be able to take your oral health into account and recommend softer, easier to eat foods that can help you get the vital nutrients you need. If you’re not interested in taking that big of a leap, you might at least want to get some blood work done if you haven’t in a while. This will be able to give you a sense of any key nutrition markers you might not be meeting.
You could also talk to your dentist about implant dentures, which consist of a traditional prosthetic connected to a series of rods that are placed in the jaw. This will provide you with substantially greater bite strength, greatly expanding the number of foods that you can incorporate into your diet.
About Our Practice
At Hill Avenue Dental, we believe that oral health and overall wellness are inextricably linked, and that by giving people beautiful smiles we can help them live a healthier life. We also know that dentistry is about more than what happens in our office; we help our patients understand as much as they can support their oral health, and work with them to find solutions that are perfectly suited to them.
If you have any questions about dentures, we can be reached at our website or by phone at (715) 392-5161.