Any type of oral surgery comes with a recovery period, and dental implant placement is no exception. Your care team will provide you with detailed instructions to support your body’s healing process and minimize the risk of complications. A lot of those directions will be related to what you should — and should not — eat. What are some foods that you should avoid during your recovery? This blog post provides practical guidance.
The First Few Days: Avoid Anything That Requires Chewing
Often, dentists recommend that patients eat a no-chew diet or a liquid diet for at least 24 – 48 hours after surgery. Essentially, this means you should avoid anything that takes any sort of effort to consume. You should also stay away from alcohol and spicy foods. Your mouth will be very tender, and you do not want to consume anything that could increase your discomfort or damage your fresh surgical sites.
Instead, you should stick to liquids and extremely soft foods, such as brothy soups, applesauce, protein drinks, meal replacement shakes, and mashed potatoes. You can even enjoy a bit of ice cream, as long as it does not have any hard or chewy add-ins.
The Next Few Weeks: Avoid Hard, Sticky, and Chewy Foods
After the first few days, you can start using any remaining natural teeth to incorporate more foods into your diet. However, it is still important that you avoid items such as:
- Hard foods, like nuts, chips, raw vegetables, etc. If you accidentally bite on such foods with your surgical site, it could cause discomfort and damage.
- Chewy foods, including certain candies, tough meats, and more. Your mouth will be sore, so you do not want to stress yourself by consuming foods that take a lot of chewing effort.
- Spicy foods. Heavily spiced items can irritate oral wounds and slow down recovery.
- Foods with small parts, such as popcorn, seeds, etc. Those tiny bits might get stuck around your surgical sites and lead to irritation.
- Alcohol. Even after your initial recovery period, alcohol could slow down your body’s ability to heal.
Before You Get Your New Teeth
After the soft tissue at your surgical sites is fairly well-healed, you can further expand your eating choices, as long as you have enough natural teeth remaining to handle the task of chewing. However, you should still be cautious, and if you are not sure whether you should eat a certain food, it may be best to skip it.
Once your new teeth are attached to your dental implants, you should be able to eat pretty much anything you want! Any dietary restrictions that you have to put up with before that should become nothing but a vague memory.
Meet the Practice
At Unique Dental of Putnam, we are proud to offer start-to-finish dental implant services in a welcoming environment. Dr. Yazan Abou Zakhem even has advanced training in computer-guided implant surgery, a method that is designed to minimize the risk of human error and complications. If you have questions about the dental implant treatment process, or you are ready to request a consultation, contact our office at 860-928-4352.