Thanksgiving is coming up soon, and our mouths are already watering thinking about all the delicious food:
- Turkey
- Ham
- Mashed potatoes
- Stuffing
- Macaroni and cheese
- Pecan pie …
We could go on, but you get the idea.
Thanksgiving is one of our favorite holidays, and the food is a big part of why. If you are missing teeth or you have loose-fitting dentures, then you might not enjoy this time of year as much as you could.
Sure you love spending time with your family (usually), but the food makes it more enjoyable. If you’d like to enjoy more of that food in future Thanksgivings and other holidays, call (843) 588-1919 now. Schedule a consultation with one of our doctors at Advanced Dental Center of Florence, SC. We want you to “Keep your smile for life!”
A Few Things To Know
Before we explain the reasons you may want full-mouth reconstruction, we want to define a few terms for you:
- Dental implants — These are titanium screws that are embedded in your jawbone. They are made to replace the roots of your lost or missing teeth.
- Mini implants — These are similar to standard implants but smaller. They also offer some benefits as they are less invasive (which reduces recovery time) and often less expensive as well.
- All-on-4® — This is an implant placement technique using just four implants to support your dentures.
Using three-dimensional imaging technology, our doctors are better able to diagnose, plan, and place your implants so they provide you with the maximum benefits.
Eat Comfortably
When you lose teeth, you lose more than just your smile. It limits your ability to bite and chew.
Biting into a buttery ear of corn or fresh crisp apple can seem nearly impossible. Trying to chew a bite of turkey or steak just isn’t the same when you are missing teeth.
Having traditional dentures can be a little better, but it’s still not like having your natural teeth again. Dentures can slide around inside your mouth. Even if they stay where you want, this can reduce our bite force quite a bit. Research has shown that people with conventional dentures regain about 20 percent of the bite force of people with healthy teeth.
That can make eating anything quite a bit harder. If you can only generate about one-fifth the power that you could before you lost your teeth, chewing can begin to feel like a chore when your jaw feels sore.
By getting dental implants or mini implants to secure your replacement teeth, you can restore much more of your biting power. This will allow you to bite and chew without the difficulty of your slippery dentures.
Enjoy Eating a Variety of Foods
We love soup and mashed potatoes … but we don’t want to eat them for every meal. One of the reasons foods taste so good is because we eat a variety of things. All of us may have slightly different tastes, but most people still prefer to sample many different flavors during their meals.
When you are missing teeth or have slippery dentures, you can’t quite try as many things as you might like. You may become frustrated that you can’t eat as well or as easily as you would like.
In time, you may give up even attempting to eat certain foods. This can affect more than just your diet. It can affect your social life as well. We’ve had multiple patients tell us how they quit dining out with the friends because they couldn’t order the foods they really wanted from the menu.
This is yet another reason to get implants to support your dentures. Having a direct connection from your jawbone to your new teeth makes the feel and function more like the real thing. Having the ability to bite and chew comfortably means you can get that steak just the way you like. You can take a bite of that chewy piece of leftover Halloween candy, and you can crunch down on peanut brittle if you’d like.
Of course, you can still enjoy mashed potatoes, soup, and pudding from time to time. You just won’t have to feel like that’s all you can eat.
Get the Nutrition That You Need
Of course, eating a balanced diet is important for more than just your enjoyment. In order to meet your nutritional needs, you should eat fruits and vegetables, grains, and meats (or other sources of protein).
Again, having loose dentures or no teeth makes this more difficult. Multiple studies have shown that people without traditional dentures are less likely to get the full nutrition that they need.
This can affect your overall health, and it can compromise your quality of life as you get older.
We want you to be as healthy as you can be for as long as possible. By getting implant-supported dentures, you can feel confident about enjoying carrots, cabbage, chicken, and so much more.
Skip the Adhesives
So far, we haven’t discussed adhesives. These can come in the form of creams, powders, and strips.
At best, they provide some temporary benefits to keep conventional dentures a little more secure. Again, these are temporary benefits. As the adhesives wear down, you lose whatever assistance you had. Many patients also have expressed their frustrations to us about how the adhesives often did not work as well as they would like.
Adhesives also can create their own problems. Many have a distinctive flavor. That flavor can affect the taste of your food, so you may not be able to enjoy the things that you can eat as much as you might want.
With implants to hold your dentures in place, you won’t need any adhesives. Your taste buds won’t be affected. You can really savor the food on your plate whether you are dining out or at a get-together with your family.
Keep Eating What You Want, When You Want
With the tools available at Advanced Dental Center, you can feel like you’ve got a complete set of healthy teeth once again. You can request an appointment at our Florence, SC dental office by contacting us online or by calling (843) 588-1919.
The sooner you get started, the sooner you can enjoy eating again.