Getting Used to New Dentures

As your mouth begins to adapt to your new dentures, any frustrations you may experience during the first stages will quickly disappear. A powerful strategy that patients can employ to rapidly resolve any speech issues is to read aloud. Patients may find their mouths producing more saliva than usual when they first begin wearing their dentures, which is completely normal. To combat this, drink water to help dilute your saliva and swallow more regularly. These early stage quirks will diminish before long and your saliva levels will return to normal.

Learning how to eat with your dentures can take some getting used to, as your mouth needs time to learn how to interface correctly with your new oral prosthetic. Some patients who come to us, find that the dimensions of their face have actually contracted, due to prolonged use of poorly fitting and badly eroded dentures. Your new dentures will restore your jaw to its correct position, which may alter your eating capabilities momentarily. Your dentures will reestablish your original facial dimensions once more, ultimately resulting in enhanced eating efficiency. For patients who are just beginning to learn how to eat with dentures, it’s recommended that you eat carefully chopped portions of food with smaller bites.

This teaches you to adapt to your new bite. When just starting out, never attempt to eat crunchy, tough or stringy foods until you are more proficient with your dentures. Try not to bite down on your front teeth when eating food as this can potentially affect the alignment of them over time. Instead, choose to bite down on the sides towards your (new) back teeth.

Whilst your dentures will require some time before you become fully confident using them, the premium grade prosthetics offered by Dentures at Varsity will allow you to once again take pleasure in eating all your favourite foods.

For patients wearing full dentures, there are number of things that can be done to ensure a faster transition:

• Slice your food into small portions and don’t chew too fast
• Chew on the left and right sides of mouth simultaneously, rather than just chewing on a particular side
• Avoid biting down on pieces of food using your front denture teeth

How long you choose to wear your dentures each day is entirely up to you, but we strongly advise patients with new dentures to leave them in, even when going to sleep at night. Once your gums have had enough time to adjust to them however, your dentures should be removed before going to sleep. This enables your gums to be cleansed by the saliva on your tongue.

For learn more about looking after your dentures, please refer to our Denture Care page.

Some patients who have their old dentures replaced with a new set may experience some pain to begin with. This is because the inner profile of their mouth may have changed somewhat since having their old dentures made for them. When your new dentures are created, they are made to precisely match the inner profile of your mouth at that point in time, so this difference in profiles can put pressure on new regions of your gums, causing soreness.
This is to be expected, but if the pain does not recede after a few days then we can help ease the pain by altering them for you. If the inflammation is considerable, remove your dentures immediately and contact us urgently. If you have partial dentures, your prosthetics are typically reinforced by your original teeth and gums. If you are not accustomed to where partial dentures, you may experience some mild discomfort during the few first few days, while your mouth adapts to them.

If a new set of dentures is causing you pain or if you have an old, existing set that is causing persistent grief, arrange for an appointment with one of our experienced dental technicians, who can examine them for you and determine if your dentures need to be repaired, relined or in the case of very old dentures, replaced with a new set.