Dentures - Should I Glue Them In?

My Mother never glued her teeth in, so why do I have to? This is a common question I get asked as a denture maker, and it is relatively easy to answer, it concerns denture wearers that may of come to denture wearing quite late in life and it is worth looking back on a bit of denture history.

In the old days, let's say for want of argument, between 1945 and 1970, a great many people lost their natural teeth at a fairly young age.

This was due to a combination of bad diet, high sugar intake and poor hygiene, and it was not uncommon for a young bride to have all her teeth extracted before a wedding so as to not be a financial liability to the young family.

In the UK the institution known as the National Health also had a role to play in the huge expansion of the wearing of complete dentures after the war.

Now, the younger you are when you first start to wear dentures, the easier it is to get used to them and if you have been wearing them for nigh on 50 years, you can bet your bottom dollar that you can control them in the mouth pretty well.

Things have changed coming up to the present day, and now it is unusual for me to see a new complete denture wearer before the age of 50. And do you know what? We are all pretty much used to the ads on TV with people munching on apples with dentures advertising the latest in denture fixatives.

What are denture fixatives and how did they develop?

Denture wearing has always been difficult for some people but there is one type of denture that is very problematic, the full lower denture.

We used to call the full lower denture the weak link of dentistry because before the advent of dental implants there was not a lot of retention to keep a full lower denture secure in the mouth.

That was before the invention of the pernicious substance, denture fixative.

This slimy sticky gunge was invented to glue your dentures in place so they do not move during eating, talking, playing sport or public speaking.

Sounds ideal, however denture fixatives are not perfect and if at all possible should be avoided, except for the few cases that wont respond to any other method of retention.

Dentures are funny things and if you start to stick them in a strange thing happens, the muscles that normally keep the dentures in their right place become slack and stop doing the job, relying on the glue to do the job for them.

So after a while of gluing the dentures in place, if you should try to keep the dentures in place by will power alone you will find it almost impossible to do so.

So if you are new to denture wearing my advice is this.

Wear the dentures for 6 weeks without help from fixative. Practise, practise, practise and get advise from an expert in dentures before resorting to the sticky stuff.

Luis Fairman is an experienced Dental Technician.

Having made dentures and snoring devices for the past 35 years he is well qualified to write about a large number of dental related topics and has had several articles published in the UK dental press. Any related questions to the subject matter in this article can be submitted to Luis at http://www.snorebond.com

He is always happy to help with denture or snore related problems.