Like your natural teeth, your dentures are supported by the bones in your jaw. However, because they’re not supported directly by the bones in your jaw, they don’t stimulate your jawbones the same way natural teeth do. This means that your body often begins removing jawbone material under your dentures–called resorption–and dentures that used to fit will stop fitting.
How quickly you lose bone is affected by many factors, including osteoporosis.
Bone Density and Resorption Rate
Osteoporosis is when your bones lose density. This is caused by many factors, including nutrition, gender, age, and lifestyle. Osteoporosis is commonly associated with many risks, especially the increasing risk of bone fracture with age. Less commonly known is the impact osteoporosis has on the resorption of your jawbone.
Loss of bone density occurs throughout the skeleton at a similar rate. In your jawbone, this can increase the rate or resorption. Dense bone is resorbed at a slower rate than porous bone, partly because there’s just more bone mass to remove in order to create the same changes in volume.
Initial studies seemed to dispute this connection, but more recent work shows that the correlation between bone density and jawbone resorption is relatively weak , so it was likely missed in earlier work. Recent studies also show that bone density definitely affects the experience of denture wearers.
Within six months, people with osteoporosis have a significantly worse experience wearing dentures than those who do not have osteoporosis. They have worse denture fit and less ability to chew with their dentures.
Getting the Best Denture Experience
If you have osteoporosis, you can still get a good experience with dentures, but you do have to take certain steps. First, talk to your doctor about your osteoporosis and what can be done to help you improve or maintain your bone mass. Next, make sure you get dentures that fit properly. Poor-fitting dentures can accelerate the loss of bone mass even further.
FOY Dentures® are designed to fit so they distribute forces on your gums and bones more evenly. This eliminates local pinch points that are not only painful, but accelerate bone loss.
To learn how The Denture Fountain of Youth® can improve your denture experience, please call (803) 781-9090 for an appointment with a Columbia denture dentist at Smile Columbia Dentistry.
