3 Tips for Eating With Dental Implants

Dental implants are a common solution to replace missing teeth. Implants restore not only our smiles but also our ability to eat and chew properly. Our oral surgeons at SF Oral Surgery offer these helpful tips for patients eating with dental implants.

Tip #1: Be Gentle With Your Dental Implants While Recovering

You’ve invested time and money into your dental implants, it’s important to make them last for as long as possible. The best way to do this is by maintaining good oral health and treating them gently and with care. After dental implant surgery, you will need to change your diet during recovery. Your jaw and mouth may feel somewhat numb or sore from the procedure. In order to give your jaw the rest that it needs, stick to a diet of soft foods that don’t require much chewing. These foods should be easy to eat like soup, applesauce, oatmeal, scrambled eggs, etc. Your soft-food diet won’t last forever, but in the beginning, it’s important to treat yourself with care.

Foods to Avoid While Recovering From Dental Implants

Tip #2: Brush After Every Meal

For San Francisco patients that have received dental implants, we can’t stress enough how important oral hygiene is. You will need to take care of your implants by brushing after a meal. Brushing and flossing after eating is essential for healthy, long-lasting implants. You should continue to brush and floss regularly as part of your daily routine. Brushing after meals serves as an extra step that will help reduce buildup of plaque or deposits that can remain on your dental implants.

Tip #3: Be Aware of Your New Diet

Even after you’ve passed the recovery period for your dental implants, you will still need to revamp your diet a bit. You won’t have to stick to only soft foods for the rest of your life. However, you will need to be more careful when it comes to hard foods. This is because although your implants are permanent, the crowns they support can still be damaged by hard foods. Once your implants have healed, you can still eat crunchy foods and don’t have to eliminate them from your diet. However, it’s important that San Francisco patients are aware that certain foods may cause damage if they are not careful.

If you have more questions or concerns about eating with dental implants, read here to learn more about implants in San Francisco.