I had to get lower dentures. I still have my wisdom teeth. on my top arch. Because of that, I am literally chewing on my lower wisdom teeth gums. My dentist does not seem to understand why this is a problem. Shouldn’t the denture go back to where the wisdom teeth are?
Kevin
Dear Kevin,
While getting removable dentures is never really completely comfortable, your dentist is allowing unnecessary pain in this situation. I suspect he just doesn’t want to fix it because it would mean starting over for him.
Your denture actually should have covered the wisdom teeth to begin with, as well as go a little past that area to what is called the retromolar pad. While they can’t cover the entire retromolar pad or it will interfere with an upper denture, they can cover a bunch of it and, as I said, it can cover the entire wisdom tooth area.
If you have already paid for the denture, you may not have leverage. However, you can tell him that you spoke to another dentist and learned that he should have covered that area. If he still doesn’t make this right, then tell him you are going to be sharing a review that he doesn’t make his products correctly and then refuses to fix them.
The Big Danger with Completely Removable Dentures
Implant Overdentures
I don’t know if your dentist warned you about this, but it is important so I am going to mention it here. Once your teeth are removed, your body senses this. As a result, it will begin redistributing the minerals in your jawbone to use elsewhere in your body. It does this in an effort to be as efficient as possible with your body’s resources. Unfortunately, it does have the nasty side effect of slowly shrinking your jawbone. After ten or so years, you will not have enough jawbone left to keep your denture in. This is known as facial collapse and why you often see denture wearers with skwunched up faces and their dentures falling out all the time.
The way to prevent this is to have implant overdentures placed instead of completely removable dentures. The implants serve as prosthetic tooth roots, which signals to your body that you still have teeth there. As a result, it leaves your jawbone alone thereby preventing facial collapse.
Additionally, it also takes care of all the other negative issues that come up with dentures. You’ll find your quality of life goes up exponentially with implant overdentures than it would with removable dentures, including your ability to eat. With dental implant support, you can eat anything you want. Even the best fitting removable dentures will reduce your chewing capacity by 50%.
This blog is brought to you by Duluth, GA Dentist Dr. David Marion.