Our teeth do a lot of things for us, but probably the most important and demanding task they perform is eating. And, unfortunately, dentures are just really poorly suited to eating. Dental implants can be much better, allowing you to enjoy food the way you used to. Here’s why:
Tear Food
Dentures don’t allow you to tear foods. They’re not seated strongly enough for you to grab food and pull with them. How often do you tear foods with your teeth? All the time. Most foods you bite into are only partly bitten through and then torn apart. Sandwiches, hamburgers, burritos, pizza, and more hand-held foods are eaten this way, not to mention raw vegetables and fruit. You won’t be able to do that with dentures. But you can with dental implants, which are secure enough to anchor foods.
Natural Chewing Motion
Our natural chewing motion goes both up-and-down and side-to-side. That’s the way our teeth are designed to chew and it’s how we learned to do it. Unfortunately, you can’t chew that way with dentures. You have to chew straight-up-and-down to avoid dislodging your dentures. This can reduce your chewing efficiency for things like steak and leafy green vegetables.
Foods Don’t Stick as Much
Dentures have a problem: they’re partly made of plastic. And plastic lets foods stick to it a lot more than happens with teeth, which are more like a nonstick ceramic material. But with dental implants, you don’t have to have any of that plastic material–it’s all ceramic, and that means you won’t get as much food stuck to them.
And dental implants have another benefit: your tongue can move around and clean them the way it did with your natural teeth. It couldn’t do that efficiently with your dentures because they’re too bulky and it would dislodge them.
Foods Don’t Get under Them
And while we’re on the subject of dislodging your dentures, this happens all the time while chewing, and it allows foods to migrate under your dentures. This causes irritation and bad breath, so to avoid that you have to visit the bathroom and clean your dentures out after every meal.
More Taste
We don’t just eat for sustenance. We eat to enjoy our food, which is something that’s hard to do with dentures. Traditional dentures cover the upper palate, which is as important for your sense of taste as your tongue is.
Another problem is that it’s hard to enjoy the taste of liquids. To really taste liquids, you have to hold them in your mouth for a moment, which dislodges dentures. And then the liquid mixes with things caught under the dentures, which may include food particles and denture adhesive.
If you are a denture wearer who is really wanting to enjoy food again, or if you’re a food lover who doesn’t want to lose your enjoyment, dental implants can help. To learn how they can help you, please call (949) 551-5902 for an appointment with an Orange County implant dentist at Rice Dentistry in Irvine.
