Why do I need to wear a traditional denture while the implants are healing for a snap-in denture?
Dental implants need time to heal after they are placed into your jaw bone. This process of healing with your bone is called osseointegration. It typically takes lower jaw implants approximately 3 months of healing and upper jaw implants 4 months of healing before you can begin the process of having your final snap-in denture. During the healing time, you will have to wear a traditional denture. This can be frustrating as it is loose-fitting and is difficult to eat with. However, it is important that you wear a traditional denture during this healing time because if you activate the snap-in denture too soon before the implants have healed, you can cause the implants to destabilize and fail. Imagine putting a post in wet concrete. If every hour you were putting even the slightest pressure against that post, it wouldn’t set securely in the concrete. The same theory goes for your implants. While they are healing in your bone we don’t want you snapping your snap-in denture in and out. We want to keep those implants as undisturbed as possible.
