Preventing Stains On Your New Dental Implants: Tips And Advice

Your new dental implants should look just like your natural teeth and should be a color similar to the teeth around it. The color of your dental implants comes from a glaze over the porcelain. This shiny, hard, protective glaze will not stain. However, if the glaze becomes scratched, the porous porcelain underneath the glaze could easily become stained. Properly maintaining your dental implants and keeping the glaze intact will enable you to keep them looking good and natural in your mouth.

Use Specially Formulated Tooth Paste

Standard toothpaste is too abrasive to be safely used on porcelain, so you'll need to purchase a special type of toothpaste made specifically for use with dental implants. This type of toothpaste has a cleaning action similar to standard toothpaste, but may not be as effective on natural teeth. Unless your dental implant toothpaste says that it can also be used on your natural teeth, you'll have to use two different types of tooth paste to ensure cleanliness for both types of teeth. 

Brush with a Toothbrush Made for Implants

Soft bristle standard toothbrushes are often gentle enough to use on dental implants. However, toothbrushes made for implants have extra-soft bristles and are often angled to reach individual teeth. Using a toothbrush specifically made for dental implants will ensure your implant is not scratched by your toothbrush, but if you do decide to use a soft-bristle toothbrush instead of a special implant brush, have your dentist check the toothbrush before using it on a regular basis. Your dentist will be able to ensure the bristles are soft enough.

Use Unwaxed Floss Or Dental Implant Floss

Flossing helps remove plaque from the base of the dental implant and protect the porcelain's glaze from high-acid food caught in the gums, thus preventing the glaze on the porcelain from becoming etched. You can buy special dental floss for your dental implant, or you can use traditional unwaxed floss. Floss around the tooth in the same way that you would floss around a standard tooth, sawing and pushing the floss down into the gum and underneath the crown to the implant itself to remove all food particles.

For more information about how you can prevent your dental implant from becoming stained over time, talk to your dentist, like on from Schirmer Dentistry. He or she will be able to give you tips that will enable you to keep the implant looking just like the other teeth around it.