What Do I Do If I Can’t Keep My Dentures In?
Posted by Annmarie SanSevero
I’ve been in dentures for almost 30 years. In recent years, I am no longer able to keep them in my mouth, even when I use denture adhesive. Is there any solution for this? I thought it was embarrassing enough to have dentures which looked obviously like fake teeth. Now, I would be grateful to have them back. I look absolutely ridiculous. I’m now of the mind that any teeth are better than no teeth. Help!
Evelyn
Dear Evelyn,
What you are dealing with is known in dental circles as facial collapse. As soon as your teeth were removed, your body recognized that and began to resorb the minerals in your jawbone. It does this in order to be as efficient with your body’s resources as possible. Realizing you no longer need those minerals to hold in the roots of your teeth, it resorbs them in order to use the minerals in other parts of your body where they are more needed.
While a remarkable use of using resources, it does have the downside of slowly shrinking your jawbone. You are now to the point of not having enough of your jawbone left to keep in your lower dentures, which rest on your jawbone. This is known as facial collapse. Hopefully, your dentist warned you about this.
The way to repair this is by having bone grafting done. This is a procedure which builds back up that missing bone. From there, you have two choices. First, you can just get dentures again. Though, this will start the entire cycle of facial collapse all over again. An alternative would be to get dental implants placed. These are like prosthetic teeth roots, which signals to your body that you will need to keep your jawbone intact. Once that has healed and the bone has had time to integrate with the implants, you can then have dentures anchored to them. These are known as implant supported dentures. This will prevent facial collapse and give you a secure bite once again. In fact, you’re find that your quality of life has gone up significantly and you can once again eat anything that you want.
As for that fake teeth look that you’ve been living with all of these years, that is not necessary either. What you need is to see an excellent cosmetic dentist that can make you a set of dentures that look beautiful and natural. The best cosmetic dentists are AACD accredited. However, you’ll want to make sure that they have post doctoral training in dental implants as well.
I hope this helps. You can finally have a smile that is secure and beautiful.
This blog is brought to you by Franklin, TN Dentist Dr. Christopher Weber.
