Dental Implants Surgery: Eating Guide and After-Care
Are you considering dental implants to replace the missing teeth in your mouth with a realistic-looking replacement option? You might wonder what you can eat after the surgical process as you heal and recover. This article discusses the dietary recommendations after dental implants, besides a few healing and recovery tips for after-care following dental implant placement.
Optimal Foods to Eat after Dental Implant Surgery
After undergoing surgery and getting dental implants in Chaska, you must refrain from having crunchy and hard foods instead of sticking to soft foods that don’t require intensive chewing. On the day of your surgery, you can have very soft or liquid foods. The foods prevent you from chewing with your mouth or biting your tongue because of the anesthesia used during the surgical process.
Immediately following dental implant placement, the implant dentist near you suggests having smoothies, yogurt, ice cream, pudding, applesauce, mashed potatoes, creamy soups, and broth without meat chunks and other soft liquid foods.
You can incorporate some foods that might require chewing in the following week. For example, you can prefer macaroni, cheese, pancakes, rice, soft bread, cooked vegetables, eggs, and pasta.
You must continue with the above foods for a couple of weeks before adding tough and chewy foods into your diet. You can prefer meat and fibrous foods, including raw vegetables. However, it depends on how quickly you heal and requires you to refrain from chewing on the side of your mouth where the dental implant is embedded for another two weeks.
Why Are The Restrictions Imposed?
When you decide to get dental implants near you to replace missing teeth, it helps if you understand you merely receive titanium posts in your jawbone without artificial teeth. You must wait for the implant to fuse with your jawbone and become part of your body to serve as your artificial tooth root. The fusing process called osseointegration extends for three to six months before you can have a custom-created dental crown mounted on the implant to replace your natural tooth.
The implant dentist imposes restrictions to ensure you don’t irritate or damage the surgical site to delay your recovery or invite infections in your mouth that might result in implant failure. Therefore if you decide to get the best replacement solution for missing teeth, you must adhere to the dentist’s instructions to ensure you recover without confronting any challenges.
After-Care Guide Following Implant Placement
Do you want to ensure that you recover quickly after implant placement? Recovery times differ between patients depending on the care they provide and their overall general health. However, the implant dentist provides an after-care guide for you to follow to ensure you recover as quickly as possible to have your artificial tooth mounted on the implant. The instructions they suggest include the following:
- Do Not Stop Eating: during the first few days after implant placement, you will feel pain and nausea and may decide to skip meals. However, it would help if you kept yourself nourished to remain healthy and strong. Therefore you must make all efforts to eat consistently and get sufficient food daily.
- Keeping Yourself Hydrated: you must keep yourself hydrated by drinking plenty of water because it helps keep your body healthy and make you feel better after surgery. However, do not consider alcohol or beer as hydrating beverages because they dehydrate the body and delay healing from implant surgery.
- Rest for a Few Days: Following implant placement, do not indulge in strenuous exercises or lifting heavy objects. The restriction is to minimize bleeding and discomfort at the surgical site.
- Mouth Care: 24 hours following implant placement, you can rinse your mouth using salt water three to four times daily. However, do not consider using over-the-counter mouthwash brands containing alcohol because they hamper your recovery. You can also brush your teeth gently at the surgical site until the implant dentist permits you to proceed as usual during your follow-up appointment.
- Avoid Tobacco Use: Smoking and chewing tobacco are significant contributors to your recovery, besides having the potential to cause implant failure. It would be best if you quit smoking before getting implants because it hampers your recovery and makes you a victim of gum disease that results in implant failure.
When you receive dental implants from Town Dental — Chaska, you receive comprehensive after-care instructions for recovery from the surgical process for implant placement. Following them to the word ensures the process proceeds smoothly, making you eligible to have your artificial teeth as soon as possible.