Miss Chewy Food? Here's Why It's Actually Recommended To Eat Hard And Chewy Food With Dental Implants
When you lose one or more teeth, one of the first things that you have to do is give up on eating anything that requires a lot of chewing. Whether you love crunchy or chewy food, it's common for people to just stop eating that kind of thing entirely when they get dentures or have missing teeth because it's just too hard to do. However, it's actually a great idea to eat this kind of food when you get dental implants. Here's why.
Understanding Implants
Dental implants are artificial, but they're designed to mimic real teeth in almost every way. As you probably know, real teeth aren't just the crown that you can see on top of the gums. Instead, the tooth has a long root that goes deep into the gums. Most tooth replacement methods don't mimic this at all, but dental implants do, because the titanium implant itself takes up the role of that tooth root.
What this means is that when you get a dental implant, you can chew whatever you like again. Dental implants don't wiggle, fall out, or move around when you're trying to eat, like dentures and even bridges sometimes can. They also have all of the grinding and tearing capacity of a real tooth, so you can crunch through hard food and tear away at tough or chewy food. However, that's just the tip of the iceberg.
How Chewing Helps
Chewing with dental implants is actually a good thing to do. This is because the artificial root — the implant itself — isn't just there to hold the implant in place, but it also activates the natural mechanisms of real teeth roots.
You see, when you chew with a real tooth, you put pressure on those teeth. That pressure doesn't just vanish; it travels down through the tooth, into the root, and finally to the bone of your jaw. When it does this, it stimulates the body to grow new, healthy bone cells. This keeps your jaw strong. Dentures and other replacements can't mimic this activity because they don't go into the gums and don't come anywhere near the bone of your jaw. However, dental implants can!
What this means is that once your dental implants have fully healed, you should feel free to chew whatever you like, no matter how chewy or crunchy it is. The biofeedback from your chewing will help to strengthen your jaw and restore any lost bone cells that went away when you lost your tooth or teeth.
Dental implants are a great way to replace missing teeth, and they can offer additional benefits to the bones in your jaw. Talk to a dentist like those at Smile City and start the process of getting dental implants today so that you can reap the benefits.