Oral surgery, whether it's a tooth extraction, dental implant placement, periodontal surgery, or root surgery, necessitates careful dietary considerations to ensure proper healing. A common question asked by many patients is, “What do I eat after dental surgery?” Following your doctor’s recommendations when it comes to your diet is vital. This article provides a comprehensive guide to navigating your diet after oral surgery, focusing on soft foods, essential nutrients, and foods to avoid.
The Importance of a Soft Food Diet
Eating soft foods after dental surgery is necessary to ensure proper healing. Post-operative dietary restrictions are primarily aimed at protecting the healing site, preventing irritation, and encouraging proper blood clotting. There’s a good chance you have sutures or stitches - and that means you need to take care not to disturb your incision and give it time to heal.
Types of Oral Surgery
- Simple Extraction: A simple extraction involves removing a visible tooth using forceps.
- Surgical Extraction: This type is more complex and is typically required for impacted teeth, such as wisdom teeth.
What to Eat After Oral Surgery: Soft Food Options
After oral surgery, you want to stick with liquids or soft foods. The overall goal is to reduce the need for chewing, so choose options that are easy to chew and swallow. Here are some soft food options to consider:
- Dairy: Yogurt (plain, not sugary), Milkshakes, Protein shakes, Ice cream or sorbet (in moderation).
- Fruits: Applesauce, Mashed bananas, Watermelon, Peaches, blended fruits.
- Grains: Cooked pasta, Rice.
- Protein: Scrambled eggs, Protein powder mixed with milk or water, Soup with beef or chicken broth.
- Other: Jell-O®, Pudding, Mashed potatoes, Mashed avocado.
These restrictions don't have to mean eating the same thing every meal. You can puree, mash, or chop foods into more manageable sizes or textures.
Nutritional Considerations
According to the University of Michigan, eating a balanced diet of enough calories and plenty of protein can help you heal. While drinking milkshakes or smoothies for breakfast, lunch, and dinner are tempting, these options tend to have lots of sugar, and sugar can increase your chances of gingivitis.
Read also: Post-Surgery Liquid Diet
- Protein: Protein helps build and repair muscle, skin, and tissue. You can easily get lots of protein from protein powder mixed with milk or water. Or you can soup with beef or chicken broth can add more grams of protein to your meal.
- Healthy Fats: For example, you can eat mashed avocado to get the small amount of recommended healthy fat you need per day.
- Vitamins and Minerals: There are several soft fruit and veggie options to ensure you get adequate nutrition while healing.
What to Avoid After Oral Surgery
What not to eat is just as important as what to eat. To promote healing and prevent complications, avoid the following:
- Spicy Foods: Avoid spicy foods like salsa and hot sauce.
- Acidic Foods: Avoid acidic foods like orange juice, tomato juice, lemonade, and vinegar.
- Hard or Crunchy Foods: Avoid hard or crunchy foods like nuts, chips, cookies, and crackers, especially items with seeds.
- Hot Foods and Beverages: Avoid very hot foods post-surgery to avoid disrupting your blood clot. Make sure those foods are lukewarm or room temperature before consuming. Sipping hot beverages while healing from tooth extraction may irritate the gum tissue and complicate the recovery process.
- Alcohol and Smoking: Alcohol can put a strain on your organs and make it more difficult for your body to heal. It can also interact negatively with common drugs prescribed after treatment like pain medication and antibiotics. You should avoid drinking while on any of these medications. Smoking shrinks the blood vessels that carry healing cells to your surgical site and can severely affect your body’s ability to heal. Additionally, smoking can lead to dry socket.
- Straws: Avoid using a straw, too, especially if you’re drinking milkshakes or smoothies because the suction from a straw can disrupt your clot and lead to dry socket.
- Over-the-counter Mouth Rinse: It’s not a food but patients commonly use mouth rinses such as Listerine or Scope following a dental surgery and it significantly interferes with healing so it’s worth mentioning.
How Long to Stay on a Soft Food Diet
It varies by the case of how long your dentist or oral surgeon may advise sticking to a soft food diet. For 3-5 days only soft foods after surgery to allow the surgical site to heal. Your dentist or oral surgeon will tell you when it's okay to start trying crunchy or hard foods like chips, cereals, or crunchy vegetables. You can ask your oral care professional for more specific instructions.
- Initial Days (2-3 days): Eat soft foods for two to three days, and slowly introduce more solid foods in the days following.
- Listen to Your Body: Your body will tell you if it’s too much - don’t overdo it.
Returning to Solid Foods
The diet after surgery really depends on the individual patient and procedure, but you can advance your diet as tolerated. It’s important that you don’t rush your return to solid foods.
General Post-Operative Instructions
All food and drinks needs to be room temperature to cool. Avoid anything hot for the first 24 hours. Clear fluids such as juices, broth, Jell-O, and warm tea and coffee are advised on the day after surgery. Do not consume foods that require you to chew.
- Avoid Eating Until Anesthesia Wears Off: It’s important to avoid eating until the local anesthesia wears off. This is to prevent you from chewing or biting on your soft tissues and tongue that you may not be able to feel. After this, you can eat as tolerated, starting with soft, cold or room-temperature foods.
- Maintain Proper Dental Hygiene: Proper dental hygiene remains crucial post-surgery.
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