If you’ve just had dental implant surgery, don’t expect to have your meals as usual. Your mouth will need time to heal before it can handle certain foods again. (Having those items before you’re ready will harm your smile, putting your new teeth at great risk.) As for the specifics on what you shouldn’t eat, your Arlington dentist will gladly tell you more. Just keep reading to learn four foods to avoid after dental implant surgery.
Which Foods Should You Avoid Post-Surgery?
While complete dental implants can handle all sorts of foods, your mouth will be too sensitive for some right after placement. You’ll need to wait 24 to 48 hours to heal before you can have such dishes.
Given these facts, please avoid the following foods immediately after surgery:
Chewy & Sticky Sweets
As long as your mouth is healing, stay away from sticky and chewy sweets. Treats like caramel and taffy can cling to your new restorations over time, dislodging them as a result. Chewing them is also likely to strain your jaw, keeping your gums from healing properly.
Hard & Crunchy Snacks
You shouldn’t have hard and crunchy snacks while your implants haven’t fully fused. After all, such tough foods would put your new posts under a lot of pressure. That force causes soreness and even implant damage in some cases, threatening your treatment results. To keep it at bay, you’ll want to hold off on raw apples, hard nuts, seeds, and so on.
Alcoholic Drinks
You should refrain from beer, wine, and cocktails following your implant surgery. As great as alcohol can be, drinking it would slow down your mouth’s recovery from the placement process. It could also have dangerous interactions with post-op pain medications you’re taking.
Hot & Spicy Foods
Don’t eat any hot and spicy foods in the days after surgery. To be honest, chewing such things would almost certainly irritate your implant site(s) and delay recovery. These foods could even increase your risk of an oral infection, which would ruin your new teeth. It follows that you shouldn’t have salsa, spicy peppers, or scalding soup for a spell.
What Should You Have Instead?
Of course, implant-safe alternatives to the above do exist. Examples of these foods include:
- Vitamin-rich and room-temperature soups
- Mashed pumpkins, potatoes, and bananas
- Scrambled eggs, salmon, and other soft protein sources
- Smoothies with no dairy
By skipping specific foods, you should heal nicely from dental implant surgery. Remember that as you proceed with your overall treatment!
About the Practice
Foundation Dental Solutions is based in Arlington, TX. Led by Dr. Douglas Baldwin, our practice – per its name – sticks to the fundamental methods of quality dentistry. We thus offer tailored treatments that suit your specific smile, whether you need a simple checkup or complex dental implants. That way, you and your family are always sure to get the best results possible! For more details or to book a visit, please contact us on our website or by phone at (817)-478-4300.