Last week, ex-pro baseball player Lenny Dykstra made the news again, but this time for something less spectacular than his on-field performance. Instead, Dykstra tweeted numerous times about the over 9 hours he spent diving through the trash looking for his dentures (sometimes helped by a wrestling clown–we’re totally serious!)
Dykstra lost his dentures after taking them out to eat. While this is not the first time someone has gone diving through the trash looking for dentures they lost at a restaurant (remember the man who got trapped in the dumpster behind the donut shop?), this incident is remarkable because Dykstra’s dentures weren’t cheap–they cost a reported $80,000. So why wasn’t he able to eat with them?
Challenging Food
Dykstra lost his dentures after eating at Jersey Mike’s, a popular sub sandwich chain. While it may not seem like it, sandwiches are actually among the most challenging foods to eat with dentures.
To eat a sandwich, you typically bite down, cutting through as much of the sandwich as you can with your incisors, then gripping the rest so you can tear it with your hands. While this can cause you to pull out the sandwich meat with your natural teeth, it’s just as likely to lead to your dentures getting pulled out if you have dentures. That’s because dentures aren’t very secure against this type of force–they’re good about dealing with force straight down, but side-to-side or forward forces can easily dislodge them.
Poor Fit
The problem of dentures getting pulled out is made worse by poor denture fit. If your dentures don’t fit properly, they don’t suction against your gums as well, and this can make them easier to dislodge.
Dykstra’s dentures were implant dentures, but as we’ve said before, dental implants aren’t always a substitute for good denture fit.
Weak Materials
Dykstra says he took out his dentures because he thought the bread was too hard for his dentures. While we can’t speak to how stale the bread in his sandwich might have been, we do know that Jersey Mike’s bread generally is not too tough. It has a little bit of crust and a pleasant chewiness that is adequate to the style of sandwich, but it’s hard to believe that it was really that hard.
Unless, that is, his dentures were made with weak materials, such as PMMA, which is the material used for most denture bases and denture teeth. PMMA is relatively strong for a plastic, but it’s not nearly as strong as natural teeth, and it can sometimes be damaged by bite forces in implant dentures.
High tech teeth used in FOY ® Dentures are stronger than PMMA teeth–and they look more natural, too!
Insufficient Support
Another reason why he might not have been able to eat the sandwich is that his dentures might not have been well supported. We’ve talked before about the difference between implant-retained dentures and implant-supported dentures. If the denture was just retained with implants, biting down on the bread might have put too much force on the gums, which might be painful.
Dentures You Can Eat with
There is no point in investing any significant amount of money in dentures you just can’t eat with. If you are looking for dentures that you can actually eat with, FOY ® Dentures are a great choice. To learn how these dentures can function better than traditional dentures, contact a local FOY ® Dentures dentist today.
