5 Tips For Limiting Pain After Dental Implant Surgery

If you have decided to go through dental implant surgery, congratulations! Dental implants are a great tooth replacement option because they look and feel like your natural teeth and continue to stimulate bone growth so that your face does not sink in due to missing gaps in your smile. However, dental implant surgery does not come without its qualms. It's an intricate surgery that will take some time to recover from, but it will be well worth it. Plus, with these five tips, you can easily limit the pain and recover as quickly as possible:

1. Take the Prescribed Medications: Most likely, your dentist is going to provide a prescription for pain medication. If you were not prescribed any painkillers and over-the-counter medications, such as ibuprofen is not enough, then you will want to contact your dentist and they can write a prescription for you. Be sure to take these as instructed to help manage your pain. 
2. Use an Ice Pack: After the surgery, you will have some swelling that you can reduce with ice packs. Since swelling can be uncomfortable, this can help significantly and ensure that you are able to rest more comfortably. Plus, with the cold of the ice pack, you will numb the area a little, which can also help reduce pain. 
3. Eat Soft Foods: Continue to eat soft foods until you are completely recovered. With the pain medications, you may feel that you can start to eat harder foods, but this can only irritate the surgical area and cause more pain. This will also lead to a longer recovery period. Even with soft foods, though, if you have to do any slight chewing, you should try to do it away from the surgical site. 
4. Rest: Too often, people will irritate the surgical site by starting to get active too soon. If you have a physical job, you need to be sure that you take enough time off to recover. Be sure that you rest and keep your head elevated, which will reduce swelling. When you exercise, your body will respond with swelling and the site can even start to bleed. 
5. Go to Your Follow Up Appointment:  If you don't go to your follow up appointment, if there are any problems with recovery, your dentist won't know about it. This means that your dentist won't be able to effectively treat it and help your recovery time be increased. During this time, you can even report if you have increased pain that needs to be addressed. 

When you follow these five tips to limit pain, you can recover and start to enjoy that beautiful new smile that you have been longing for.