Congratulations. You just completed your dental implant surgery. Now you’re wondering, what can I do to make sure this is successful? In this Article we go over a few things that help and assist in you having a smooth healing process.
Minimize Exercise and Strenuous Activity After Surgery
So for the first 24 to 48 hours after surgery, it’s very important to keep your heart rate down because your bleeding needs to be controlled. A lot of times blood is necessary to help the areas heal, but excess blood is not what you want. So for that first 24 to 48 hours, no strenuous exercise.You can go on a nice, long, slow walk, something like that.
It keeps your heart rate low. The main reason we don’t want you to get strenuous exercise is that any strenuous exercise is going to lead to the heart rate going up. And when the heart rate goes up, that means the blood starts pumping faster. And these areas where we’ve got sutures and we’ve got new tissue attachment, the last thing we want to do is create a lot of pressure that might cause those areas to tear, and healing won’t be successful.
Avoid Food and Drink that is Too Hot or Too Cold
Another tip to keep in mind is for you to avoid anything too hot or too cold. This especially applies while you’re still numb. Not so much the cold but the hot because a lot of times you can scald or you can cause tissue damage. If you drink something that’s too hot, and because of the numbness you’re not aware of it. With the numbness especially, don’t eat or drink anything right after while you’re still numb.
Avoid Smoking, Spitting, and Other Acts that Cause Suction
It’s been heard before but, avoid any form of smoking, spitting, and anything that makes a suction.
The main reason is any kind of suction, whether it’s sucking on a straw, or sucking on a cigarette, basically, what that can do is you can pull out the blood clot and cause a delay or issue in the healing process. Removal of that blood clot can also cause dry socket, which is not fun. In order to maximize your healing and minimize the healing time, avoid smoking or sucking through a straw. Also, avoid spitting. It may feel natural to spit if you do have some blood or extra saliva, extra fluid in your mouth, but the action of drawing that saliva or the extra blood and spitting it out can also stop the blood clot.
Don’t Touch the Site
Don’t touch the site with your finger or your tongue. A lot of people have the tendency to go in there and poke and feel, especially when you’re numb. You want to see what’s going on, so you want to dig around there and poke around. Definitely don’t do that. If you do that in your mouth, it’s just gonna take healing even longer. So do your best. Don’t stick your fingers in there. You know, a lot of times if you’ve got a suture, don’t pull your lip out to look at it because the action of pulling is gonna tear. So basically, you want to treat this area as gently as possible. Give it a good 24 to 48 hours to rest and heal.
Don’t Forget Your Antibiotics
Make sure to take your antibiotics. A lot of times when we’re doing an implant, we are actually introducing a foreign body into your body. And so the body has a natural reaction to want to fight that. So we need to use antibiotics to calm the area down. Make sure there’s nothing foreign in there.
The body is going to attack. It’ll help the healing process. So take your antibiotics, follow the whole order all the way through. That’ll definitely help the healing process. If you do feel like you’ve got something in there, some of the soft foods that we ask you to eat, you can rinse gently with warm salt water. That’s fine. But again, don’t spit it out. Kind of lay over the sink, let it come out.
Eat Soft Foods
Definitely avoid anything really hard, especially if you don’t have anything to protect that extraction site. Hard foods can poke right into there and either causes the suture to dislodge or tear the tissue. These are all things you want to avoid right after surgery. Soft food will be your friend in irritating the sight of the procedure. The calm and less bothered the are is the more natural and faster it will heal.
Follow Up Appointment
You will then have a follow-up appointment whether it’s the next day or a day you scheduled after the surgery because you need to go over the medical instructions and make sure everything was clear and you don’t have any questions or concerns because sometimes on the big day of surgery, when you go over the instructions, you’re more focused on what’s going to happen and not as focused on the aftercare. So always follow up and make sure you have all your questions answered. If you want to know in detail what type of foods you should eat and what type of foods you should avoid after dental surgery, remember just to ask your doctor or the dental team.
Dr. Brett Langston and the team at Dental Implant & Aesthetic Specialists can provide all answers and the steps for after Implant care. Reach out today to learn more.