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At CS Family Dentistry, we understand our patients may need clarification on specific procedures or regarding oral health. During your appointment with Dr. Cole Smith, we invite you to take the opportunity to discuss any conditions or pain you have or about the treatments we offer. Dr. Smith will make sure you understand your options before beginning or recommending any procedure.
If you have any questions about our practice, your oral health, or any services we offer, read through our frequently asked questions. If your question isn't answered, or you would like to learn more, give us a call or send an email using the online form on our contact page. We will answer your question and make sure you have all the information you need.
Dentures
I would rather you did not. Taking it out at night gives the tissue underneath a chance to recover, and that tissue spends the whole day under pressure. Leaving the denture in around the clock also raises the odds of a yeast infection under the plate, which shows up as red, sore tissue in the exact shape of the denture.
There is a longer-term reason too. The ridge your denture sits on slowly shrinks once the teeth are gone, and constant pressure on it does not help. That ridge is what holds the denture in the first place, so protecting it is worth the small inconvenience. Less ridge means a looser denture, more relines, and fewer good options later.
Take it out, brush it, and leave it in water overnight so it does not dry out.
If the real reason you sleep in it is that you do not want someone seeing you without it, say so rather than just wearing it every night. That is a common and completely understandable reason, and there are ways to work around it.
Almost always because your jaw has changed shape, not because the denture is defective. The ridge of bone that a denture rests on slowly shrinks once the teeth are gone. It is a normal process and it never fully stops, so a denture that fit perfectly when it was made is sitting on a different shape a few years later.
How fast that happens varies a lot between people, and it is faster in the lower jaw, which is part of why lower dentures give people the most trouble.
There are two ways to deal with it. A reline reshapes the fitting surface of the denture to match the ridge you have now, which is the usual first answer and it is not a new denture. If the ridge has shrunk far enough that relines stop holding you for long, implants are the other option, because they anchor the denture to bone instead of resting on a surface that keeps changing.
Bring the denture in and let me look at it. Whether you need a reline, a new denture, or implants underneath it is not something you can tell from how it feels.
A denture picks up plaque the same way teeth do, and because it is not living tissue it does nothing to clean itself. Left alone it builds up film, stains, and smell, and the tissue underneath gets red and sore. The version I see most often is a yeast infection under the plate: uncomfortable, easy to miss because it is hidden, and almost entirely preventable.
If you still have some of your own teeth, it matters more, not less. A partial denture sits against those teeth and will hand plaque straight to them, so a dirty partial turns into a decay problem in the teeth you are trying to keep.
Cleaning it is not complicated. Brush it every day with a denture brush and something non-abrasive. Not regular toothpaste, which is gritty enough to scratch the surface, and those scratches give plaque more to hold onto. Rinse it after meals when you can, and leave it in water overnight so it does not dry out and change shape.
Implants are placed in the jaw and your denture is fitted with attachments that snap onto them. You still take it out yourself to clean it, exactly as you do now. That is the design rather than a limitation, and it is the part most people have backwards when they come in. If you have read about implant dentures that are fixed in permanently and never come out, that is a different treatment, and it is one I refer out rather than do here.
On a lower denture it can be as few as two implants. On an upper it is usually four, but many upper dentures do not need implants at all. An upper covers the palate and usually gets real suction from it, while a lower has nothing to seal against and sits on a ridge with your tongue underneath. That is why the lower is the one almost everyone struggles with, and it is where I would start.
Often we can use the denture you already have, as long as it has enough thickness where the attachments need to sit. If the material is too thin there it would fracture around them, and in that case a new denture is the honest answer rather than a sales pitch. Bring the one you wear and I will tell you which it is.
Start to finish it takes about six months, and most of that is the bone fusing to the implants rather than time you spend in the chair.