By age 12, permanent teeth replace old baby teeth. However, it does not mean all your adult teeth have appeared. You develop your third molars between 17 and 21, called wisdom teeth, because they erupt when you are more mature.
Many people find the eruption of wisdom teeth painful, which are often impacted, indicating they are trapped in your gums and jaw. Generally, people develop at least one impacted wisdom tooth.
Impacted wisdom teeth do not grow in the correct position or cause pain, infection, gum disease, cysts, or tooth decay, bringing a referral to the dentist in Tracy, CA, to remove the impacted tooth. You will receive anesthesia and sedation during the procedure to ensure the tooth removal procedure does not cause immense discomfort.
After your surgery, you will experience swelling and mild discomfort and will receive instructions from the dentist to modify your diet for a few days and have foods that are painless to chew. Wisdom tooth surgery causes pain and trismus in approximately seven percent of people affecting chewing, swallowing, and food consumption.
How Long Should You Refrain Eating Before Wisdom Tooth Removal?
You receive instructions from the dentist not to eat or drink anything for eight hours before your surgery, depending on the type of anesthesia you will receive. For example, if you have scheduled your surgery in the morning, the dentist advises you not to have food or drinks after midnight. It helps if you check with your dentist for specific guidelines.
Why Is It So Important to Eat the Right Foods after Wisdom Teeth Removal?
Surgery to remove wisdom teeth leaves a wound in your mouth where a blood clot forms to aid your recovery. The right foods are vital to prevent the blood clot from dislodging and becoming vulnerable to a dry socket. Dry sockets are painful and require immediate attention from dentists providing sedative dressings and additional medications to prevent the infection from aggravating. In addition, dry sockets also delay healing, making it essential to have suitable foods after removing your wisdom tooth.
List of Foods to Eat After Wisdom Teeth Removal
After wisdom tooth extraction, the Tracy dentist suggests drinking plenty of water and eating soft foods you can comfortably tolerate. You are responsible for ensuring you get sufficient proteins, vitamins, and minerals because they are helpful for wound healing.
If you avoid foods or concentrate having juices and broth, your body does not get the essential nutrients for healing. In addition, you must prevent malnutrition by falling short on proteins and vitamins because it slows down your recovery.
A comprehensive list of soft foods you can include in your diet consists of the following:
Applesauce or pureed foods, mashed soft fruit like avocados and bananas, steamed mashed carrot or cauliflower, steamed apples, peaches, and pears, lukewarm broth or cream soups, oatmeal, congee, porridge, or cream of wheat, scrambled eggs, smoothies, cottage cheese, milk, soft cooked pasta, mashed cooked lentils, beans, or chickpeas, frozen or regular yogurt and ice cream.
You can include an additional source of protein with your meals by adding eggs, yogurt, milk, fish, beans, and lentils. In addition, proteins help speed wound healing.
How Long to Refrain Eating after Wisdom Teeth Extraction?
You can eat whenever you feel hungry after the surgery. However, you must remain careful with your food choices and wait until the anesthesia wears off to ensure you don’t bite your tongue or cheeks or burn your throat by drinking hot coffee. If you are comfortable eating and drinking and do not consider having harmful foods for the surgical wound in your mouth, you can start eating as soon as you wish.
Which Foods Should You Avoid?
After undergoing wisdom tooth extractions in Tracy, the dentist suggests not drinking alcohol, fruit juice, carbonated drinks like soda or Alka-Seltzer, and caffeinated hot beverages like coffee and tea. The liquids can irritate the surgical site in the mouth to slow your healing. In addition, you must avoid straws when drinking any beverages for at least a week after removing the wisdom tooth.
Besides the above, the dentist will advise refraining from crunchy and hard foods challenging to chew and culprits for leaving food particles in your mouth and the surgical site that can cause infections to delay your recovery. If you consider eating hard, scalding, chewy, crunchy, and spicy foods, they can remain trapped in the tooth socket to irritate the surgical site. Therefore you must exist on soft foods by avoiding nuts and seeds besides all the above until you have recovered in about two weeks. You must continue having the soft food diet for at least 96 hours after the removal and do not help to wait for two weeks before you reintroduce your regular foods into your diet.
If you need comprehensive instructions on recovering from wisdom tooth removal, kindly schedule your procedure with Innovo Dental and Implant Studio, performing minimally invasive tooth removal procedures and providing the instructions you need before surgery. In addition, they will make the removal of your third molars comfortable and anxiety free by not recommending tooth replacement with dental implants.