If you’re middle aged you may have dental problems for a variety of reasons. You may not have had access nor the opportunity to undergo routine dental treatments throughout your earlier years. You might have become lax with dental visits due to a hectic schedule. You may have had perfect teeth until a recent stressful period in your life.

No matter what the reason, you might now find yourself in a position just like many others – having lost multiple teeth or living with failing dentition. The thought of having to wear plastic dentures could be mortifying, as its always been associated in society as something meant for the elderly.

In today’s world, with the availability of Dental Implants, you no longer need to face the dilemma of having to use dentures in your golden years. Here are 7 reasons why you could benefit from Dental Implants more than your younger counterparts:

1. Improved Function: The high strength and durability of dental implants overshadows that of regular plastic dentures. You would be able to savour all your favourite treats, from the hardest of foods to the most chewable, without having to worry that the implants may rock, break or come off (as you would have been advised by your dentist to avoid biting hard foods with dentures!)
2. Improved Comfort: Unlike dentures, dental implants sit within the bony architecture of your upper and lower jaws. Their prosthetic counterparts such as crowns, bridges or even dentures can be attached onto the implants, covering minimal areas within the mouth. Due to this, you need not worry about having extensive plastic pieces in your jaws that impose a great deal of discomfort to you during wear.
3. Improved Speech: Dental implants do not cover an extensive area of the palate and hence aid in preserving your articulation and speech far better than dentures do.
4. Bone Preservation: Implants function similar to a natural tooth, hence they do not exert much pressure onto the tissues and bone in your mouth. This allows dental implants to naturally preserve the amount of remaining bone and the gums that cover it.
5. You don’t need ‘denture-glue’: Dentures, being a block of plastic, stick to your jaws dependant on the suction formed between the plastic and tissues/gums in your mouth, often with the aid of a sticky denture adhesive. This can be quite uncomfortable as you need to get used to having a glue-like substance in your mouth all day, every day.
6. You don’t have to worry about them coming off: Dentures tend to become loose over the years. Unless you get them fixed from time to time at your dentist, you may be faced with uneventful circumstances such as having your dentures fall out while you are chewing or worse – while speaking!
7. Excellent Aesthetics: If you only have a couple of missing front teeth, having dentures to match the rest of your teeth isn’t always possible. With an implant-retained prosthesis such as full ceramic crowns/bridges and their zirconium alternatives, shade matching is now better than ever. You can almost always match your natural tooth colour. Also, you don’t have to worry about having all that pink denture plastic showing out every time you smile!
8. You’ve got the funds for it! – If you’ve worked hard and saved up for a lifetime, consider implants an investment for improved quality of life. You’ll be able to appear in public with an amazing smile and enjoy all of your favourite foods without any qualms.

After months of anxiety and frequent dental visits, you’ve got your dental implants in and they’ve finally healed. Your dentist tells you that they’re integrated into your bone, and soon enough you have your prosthetic teeth replacements in (this could be a crown/bridge/denture supported by the dental implant). Your dentist gives you a good half hour of advice on caring for your implant, but you were a little too focused on your new smile and didn’t pay much attention.

Have no fear! Here are 5 tips to let you know just what to do for those new dental implants so they can give you maximum benefits for the time and money you invested:

1. Good Oral Hygiene Maintenance:  We cannot stress the importance of home oral care enough. It is of prime importance because you will only visit your dentist once every couple of months, and within that short period any compromise on your oral care routine can cost you dearly.

   You must preserve the integrity of your dental implants. Prevention in this context is always better than cure, because it can save you a lot of time and money.Regular brushing in the proper way, flossing, using your dental picks or interdental brushes are all crucial.

2. Regular Dental Visits: Even with a great home oral care routine, it’s easy to miss out on some of the hidden areas around your new implant. They may only be accessible with ultrasonic cleaning, which you will not have access to at home. Your dentist will have customized scaling tips to best suit cleaning around implants.

3. Early Detection of Implant Glitches: Watch for early signs of chips or cracks on your tooth replacements (crown/bridge/denture). Also check for ill-fitting regions that can be adjusted before they have detrimental damage to your tissues or to the prosthesis itself.

4. Regular Health Checks: Recent studies have shown a correlation between certain systemic diseases such as Diabetes Mellitus and heart disease to your gum health. It’s been proven that worsening of these diseases to your health progressively worsens your gum health, and worsening gum health may in turn worsen your overall health.

To break this vicious cycle, it’s as important to maintain your overall health as it is your oral health for the integrity of your implants. Your implants either sit within your jaw bone, which is covered by your gums, or they are supported by adjacent teeth around your implant site.

It’s vital to maintain the health of your gums. All parameters that affect gum health can contribute to the well-being of your dental implants.

Having your wisdom teeth removed can range anywhere from a positive to a traumatic experience depending on how difficult the surgery was. There can be complications for those who waited too long to get a wisdom tooth removed, and these often carry over into the recovery process.

To reduce the amount of discomfort you experience during the recovery phase, here are some simple tips that you can follow at home.

Immediately Following Surgery:

1. Bite firmly on the gauze packs provided – this could range anywhere from 30 minutes to an hour or two. You may need to change the gauze during this time. The trick is to bite gently – but firm enough to apply pressure on the surgical site to stop any active bleeding.

   Slight pools of blood mixed with saliva may be seen upto a day after surgery. You might see stains on your pillow the next morning, and this is normal. If you notice alot of bleeding – call up your dentist immediately.

2. Avoid rinsing your mouth vigorously or manipulating the site – if you look at the site where the tooth was removed you may see a blood clot and this is normal. The clot helps the wound to heal, so you need to try and maintain this clot in place for as long as you can the first day.

   Vigourously spitting, rinsing, sipping with straws or touching the clot will remove it, causing bleeding and other complications later. Be gentle and mindful of your blood clots to ensure proper healing.

3. Take your medications on time – Do not wait until the pain comes back to take your prescribed medication. They take a couple of hours to work so delaying them will leave you in a lot of pain and with additional s­­welling. Some of these medications serve a dual purpose to reduce pain and swelling and it is important to manage both conditions.

4. Placing an ice pack over the site – gently press an ice pack on your face for 2-3 minutes each time over the area where the surgery was performed. The cold may alleviate some of your pain and swelling.

5. Rest, hydration and a soft diet- There may be stitches at the site, which can sometimes make talking and chewing difficult. Limit your activities for the first two days, drink lots of water (cold water is preferable on the first day to minimize bleeding episodes) and eat a soft diet like porridge or soups.

Following these tips early in your recovery phase may save you alot of discomfort, speed up your recovery and reduce the chance of getting the site infected.