Dentures should be comfortable for at least a full day of wear, and much more than that if your dentures are permanently fixed. But for many people, dentures cause irritation after just an hour or two of wear. Tongue irritation is unfortunately common, but it’s also correctable. Here are some of the common reasons why your dentures might be irritating your tongue.
Irritation Under Your Tongue
Irritation under the tongue can be the worst. Most of the tongue is designed for moving around the mouth and is at least prepared to encounter hard substances, even being bitten! But the underside of the tongue and the floor of the mouth are not really capable of dealing with irritating contact. When a denture begins irritating under there, it’s hard to deal with.
The irritation under your tongue might be caused by pressure being put on the denture from your upper teeth. When this occurs, it presses the flange into the floor of the mouth, and if the denture isn’t fitted precisely, this can be irritating. Irritation can occur in the front of the denture whether it’s your front teeth or back teeth that are poorly fitted. Irritation is more likely if the denture is able to slip under bite pressure, causing it to scrape the floor of your mouth.
FOY® Dentures are fitted to account for your bite forces, reducing the risk that you will experience unbalanced bite forces that can cause irritation.
The flange under the denture may also be contacting your frenum, the thin membrane that connects your tongue to the floor of the mouth.
Biting Your Tongue
Biting your tongue every once in awhile is normal, even if you have natural teeth. However, if you find yourself doing it every day or even multiple times a day, then it’s likely your dentures are to blame.
The most common problem is simply that your dentures are too narrow. This means that there isn’t enough room for your tongue. It’s your tongue’s job to push food onto your teeth for chewing, but then it needs room to retreat out of the way when the teeth come down. If your tongue doesn’t have that room, then you will keep biting it repeatedly.
This can even occur when you’re not even chewing. When you swallow, your teeth close to serve as anchors for your throat muscles, and your tongue helps push material down your throat. If your back teeth are too narrow, you can sometimes nip your tongue while swallowing. Not very painful, but annoying–and it can make it hard to swallow.
What to Do about Tongue Irritation
Whenever you have an issue that you think is related to the fit of your dentures, first give yourself time to adjust to your new dentures. If the problem doesn’t resolve , then talk to the dentist who supplied the dentures. Explain the problem and give them a chance to fix it. Unfortunately, many dentists who make dentures don’t really understand the principles behind them, they just supply prefabricated economy dentures or follow some simple steps to measure your mouth–they don’t know how to fix problems.
In that case, you will need to talk to a new dentist and probably have new dentures made.