Lenny Dykstra is a baseball player from another time, who made the news again last week with the crazy story of how he spent 9 hours searching through the trash outside a restaurant looking for the dentures he’d accidentally thrown away. With the help of his Uber driver (who is also a part-time wrestling clown who goes by “Sprinkles”–you can’t make this stuff up!), Dykstra searched all night, then came back in the morning on his own to find his dentures.
The thing is: there’s no reason why Dykstra should have lost his dentures in the first place. His dentures got thrown out because he took them out while eating a sub at Jersey Mike’s. He says he took them out because he thought the bread was too tough for his dentures. This should never have happened: dentures designed to eat can be made of materials even stronger than natural teeth. You should be able to eat anything with implant dentures that you can eat with natural teeth. But you have to make sure your dentist knows you want to use your dentures to eat.
Sturdy Materials
In the past, dentures were made of many things: porcelain, rubber, even, briefly, aluminum. But most dentures have been made of plastic since the 1950s. Although the plastic is relatively strong as plastics go, it’s not the strongest material available, and it’s not as strong as natural teeth.
However, in recent years, we have developed new, better materials for dentures, especially implant dentures. The ceramics used in our CeraSmile implant dentures are not just stronger than plastic, they’re stronger than natural teeth. Heck, they’re even stronger than the titanium used in dental implants.
With this type of denture material, you will never have to think about whether that sandwich you’re eating is too tough for your dentures. (Unless of course the sandwich is made of something like titanium–don’t do it! Dentures are designed only for eating food.)
Adequate Support
The other problem with many forms of implant dentures is that they aren’t supported enough to let you chew freely. Many implant dentures are designed to just be held in place with dental implants. The dentures still rest on your gums, which don’t give enough support to let you chew your food properly.
Natural teeth are supported by the bones, and if you want to really be able to enjoy food with implant dentures, you need to make sure that your dentures are, too. They need to be designed so that bite force transfers from the denture to the implant to the bone. Often, this means making them what are called “hybrid” dentures. They are firmly attached to the dental implants, so they’re not removable except by your dentist. You will brush and floss them like natural teeth, and we’ll take them out sometimes for additional checks and cleaning, but for the most part, they’ll function just like natural teeth.
Make Sure Your Dentist Knows What You Want
Often, we will talk about dentures that don’t function properly as cheap dentures, but it’s reported that Dykstra’s dentures cost $80,000. We have to assume, then, that he didn’t communicate clearly to his dentist what he wanted from his dentures, because that’s the level of cost where you should be able to eat anything–even a sub sandwich–with your dentures in.
If you are looking for quality dentures that look beautiful and let you eat whatever you want, please call (912) 234-8282 today for an appointment with a denture dentist at Beyond Exceptional Dentistry in Savannah.
