When you begin wearing dentures or veneers, the experience can feel uncomfortable and alien. Even after you’ve become used to them, the process of ensuring these tools are taken care of properly can become taxing. With the right knowledge, however, you can easily take care of your dentures and veneers in a fashion that will ensure they remain healthy and wearable for many years to come. To help you along this journey, here are ten invaluable tips for taking care of veneers and dentures:
1. Develop a Routine to Keep Track of Where They Are
Many patients who use dentures and removable veneers experience a common problem: misplacing them. It’s much easier to misplace them than you would think, so having a clear routine surrounding where you take them out and store them is crucial. Doing so will also help you follow the other maintenance tips that will be discussed, so perfect this step to ensure you’ll tackle the other ones with ease and keep your oral hygiene strong.
2. Rinse Them Every Time You Finish a Meal
Just like regular teeth, dentures and veneers can become dirty easily. Food build-up, food caught between teeth, and other issues can easily arise. To ensure you keep potentially unhealthy food build-up from the inside of your mouth while you’re wearing your dentures, be sure to rinse them after every single meal that you eat. Even a quick rinse is effective at keeping your dentures in a clean, easy-to-use state.
3. Avoid Soaking Them in Hot Water
Many people who use dentures make the mistake of thinking they must be stored in hot water. However, this is the opposite of what is recommended, as room temperature water is what is recommended. A hot water rinse can be useful in maintaining your dentures in some cases, but avoiding hot water for long-term storage use is essential for making your dentures last as long as humanly possible.
4. Clean Them Twice a Day
Once again, your dentures need to be maintained in ways that are similar to regular healthy teeth. While you may no longer be brushing your teeth twice a day, you should replace this habit with cleaning your dentures twice a day instead. Use the cleaning instructions and products recommended by your dentist, and ensure you clean the dentures properly, and they will last for a long, long time.
5. Avoid Smoking
Smoking can do lasting damage to your dentures. While smoking will not damage your dentures at the same rate and intensity as it does to regular teeth, the nasty habit will still yellow your dentures and will potentially give them a bitter taste. The health benefits of stopping smoking are hard to overstate, so making this leap is one of the best ways to both take care of your dentures and your body as a whole.
6. Wear a Mouthguard During Physical Activity
While your dentures are built to be tough, they are still susceptible to damage that regular teeth are at risk of. By wearing a mouthguard anytime you’re playing sports or engaging in physical activity where your mouth could be hit, you’ll ensure your dentures will not be damaged. Mouthguards help protect the rest of your mouth from being damaged in the unfortunate situation that your dentures break as well. Mouthguards can also do wonders for those who experience issues with grinding their dentures.
7. See Your Dentist More Frequently
Once you require dentures to live your day-to-day life, visits to the dentist will need to become much more frequent. To ensure your dentures are serving you well, and not inadvertently causing any damage to your oral health, dentists need to check them out every few months. Consulting your dentists about the scheduling needs that will serve you best in this situation is essential.
8. Do Not Chew Gum
Chewing gum can cause frustrating, hard-to-correct issues with many types of dentures. Consult your dentist about whether you can chew gum with your pair, and ask them about any other types of food that should be avoided while wearing your dentures, and they will last for much, much longer.
9. Be Gentle with Yourself
When you first start wearing dentures, it can be an uncomfortable experience. Being gentle with yourself, and allowing your mouth to slowly become adjusted to this new experience, becomes key in making a successful transition. Once again, advice from your dentist can help you make this change in a more effective, likely-to-succeed fashion.
10. Maintain Healthy Oral Hygiene Practices
While your dentures must be maintained healthily, the rest of your mouth will still need to be kept clean and healthy as well. Using oral wash, cleaning your tongue, and performing other oral health-centric practices after you’ve begun wearing dentures is an absolute must. Your oral health will become that much more important to your day-to-day comfort once you start wearing dentures, after all.
Here’s to a Long-Lasting Pair of Dentures
With these ten techniques, you should easily keep your dentures in a healthy, usable state for many, many years to come. Each pair of dentures can be different, however, so being openly communicative with your dentist about how you should care for your dentures becomes critical. Thankfully, the transition can otherwise be easy and comfortable as long as you take these ten important steps.
