I have a pretty strong gag reflex. One of the reasons I ended up with dentures is that I dreaded my dental appointments because I’d throw up every time it was time for some x-rays. Now, I am having trouble with the upper denture. It uses this hard plate to help keep things in but I am constantly gagging and having to take it out, which defeats the purpose of having it. I don’t have the same problem with my lower dentures because it just sits on the bone and there isn’t anything pushing on my palette. Is there any way around this?
Stephanie
Dear Stephanie,
You are in a difficult position. The firmness of the framework you are struggling with is necessary in order to fit properly and allow you to chew. The only way to have the dentures without that framework, is to get implant supported dentures. With this, you will have four to six dental implants placed on your upper arch. Then, after the bone has had time to integrate with the implants, your dentures can be anchored to it. These implant supported dentures are commonly called implant overdentures. This will prevent you from having to have any framework on the roof of your mouth. There will be nothing there to cause a gag reflex. Instead, it will be just like having your own healthy, natural teeth in your mouth again.
While having those dentures on the upper arch will make your dentures more comfortable, they will be even more important to have on your lower arch. Once your teeth were removed, your body recognized that there were no longer any teeth roots which it needed to support. Our body’s are remarkable efficient machines. In order to use the minerals in your jawbone as efficiently as possible, it begins to resorb those minerals to use them elsewhere in your body where they will be more useful. Unfortunately, that will slowly shrink your jawbone. Eventually, somewhere between ten and twenty years from when you first place them, there won’t be enough of your jawbone left to even retain your denture. In dental circles, this is known as facial collapse.
Placing dental implants in your bottom arch, signals to your body that there are still teeth roots in your mouth. As a result, you will not have to worry about facial collapse and your jawbone will stay completely intact.
This blog is brought to you Decatur, AL Dentists Drs. Drake and Wallace.
