Denture Care Advice
Learn how to look after your dentures, with our denture care best practices.
Knowing how to correctly look after your dentures will improve their longevity. Your denture should be looked after in the same manner that your regular teeth should be looked after. Cleaning your dentures on a daily basis helps to prevent bacteria related infections, helps to protect your gums and helps to preserve any remaining natural teeth that you may have. It’s strongly advised that you wash your dentures before going to bed every night, at least once a day and following meals, if necessary.
The recommended routine for cleaning your dentures is:
- Brush them
- Soak them
- Brush them again
It’s always a good idea to clean your dentures over a body of water or over something that provides adequate cushioning such as a small towel, blanket or such, which helps to prevent damage to your dentures in the event that they are dropped. Wash them with a denture cleanser to help remove stains or unwanted gunk. Brush your dentures in the same fashion that you would with your regular teeth, but avoid brushing them too rigorously as this can tarnish them.
Attempting to clean your dentures with bleach can have disastrous consequences. Bleach can permanently damage the structural integrity of your dentures, making them far more brittle and liable to breakage. Bleach can also ruin the aesthetics of your dentures, completely destroying their lustre and lifelike appearance. In addition to avoiding bleach, be sure to never clean your dentures with high temperature water, as this can distort the shape, ruining the alignment of them with your gums.
Extra care and caution must be taken when cleaning chrome dentures. Some standard denture cleansers can actually be detrimental to the metals, so we recommend speaking to one of our dental technicians, who can advise you on the safest methods for cleaning them.
When patients first acquire their new dentures, we strongly recommend that they leave them in, even when going to bed. Once your gums have had sufficient time to adapt to them, we then suggest removing them before going to sleep each night, as this allows your gums to be cleansed by the saliva on your tongue.
Some patients may discover that they have an excess build-up of tartar (also known as calculus) on their dentures, which can be difficult to cleanse without the proper equipment. Bring your dentures in to our clinic and we can have them professionally cleaned for you at our onsite lab. We’ll have your dentures looking as immaculate as the day you first bought them. The cleaning process only takes a matter of moments to complete.
For more information about looking after your dentures, speak to the team at Dentures at Varsity today, specialists in denture care.