My mum has to wear dentures - what is the best denture adhesive?

tinkerbell99

My mum has to wear dentures - what is the best denture adhesive?

She is specifically having problems when removing - stickyness on gums....

Which one dissolves well when taking them out? I understand this is not a sexy topic of convo, but it is life...

swingaloo

If the dentures fit correctly there should be no need at all for adhesive. 

McKneff

As above. I've worn dentures for 40 years or more and never used adhesive ever. 
They should fit perfectly, especially given the cost these dwys

comeandgo

Never needed adhesive in all the years I’ve had a set, neither did my parents which must go back 50 years.  Go back to dentist and tell them of your problems, they are not fitting properly.

brook2jack2

Very often people with full dentures will feel they need adhesive , particularly on the lower dentures. This is because very often people will lose all the bone in the lower jaw so the dentures just "sit" on top of the gum. 

Different people find they prefer different adhesives , seabond tends not to leave as much residue as poly grip etc. However no denture fixative is really effective on lower dentures and dentures, in general , will move when eating , it's just most people learn to control them with the muscles of their lips and tongue. 

Toothsmith

As Brook said above, some adhesive can be necessary sometimes.

Back in the day when people had their teeth out really young, and were wearing dentures from a very young age - we have a generation who have grown up where dentures have been the norm for the vast majority of their life, and they really can't remember anything much different. Back when they had their dentures, still being young, and going out and socialising and 'courting' - they had to get used to them and had great motivation to get used to them! They just 'got on with it'.

Nowadays, people are coming to dentures much later in life when the more complex restorative treatments they've had on their own teeth come to the end of their lifespan, and there aren't any further alternatives left other than extraction/implants/dentures. Older people simply aren't as adaptable to new things - and dentures can be quite a tricky thing to get used to. It's completely different eating on a plastic protheses to eating with your own teeth - and it can take a fair few weeks, even months to get used to. Even then, it won't be the same as eating with your own teeth. So it doesn't follow that just because the patient can't use them well yet, that they're 'not fitting properly'. The dentist should have warned the patient about what to expect with a new set of dentures as well though.

Also - as patients who have been perfectly happy with dentures age, problems can also crop up that require increasing use of denture adhesives.

The bone ridges that hold the denture do slowly disappear as a patient ages. This can happen a lot quicker in the patients who prefer wearing their dentures 24h a day, and sleep in them too. This  means that when the bone is really down to very little - it is more the muscles of the cheeks and lips that are holding them in rather than any 'suction' under the plate and retention from that lost bone. 

Coupled with that, as patients age, muscle control often deteriorates as well. This can lead to very elderly frail patients starting to have real problems keeping dentures in. Dementia, strokes, Parkinson's etc can all really destroy a patients ability to successfully manage with dentures.

So there are times when adhesives can be a help, and it's not as simple as 'if they fit properly, they'll be fine'. Also as Brook has said though, there isn't any one that is particularly better than any other. It is a case of just trying some out and seeing which one you get on with best. Dentists do often have samples of some of them though, so worth asking there to see.