How Long Must You Wait to Eat After Getting a Crown Cemented?

When you consider restoring a broken or decayed tooth with a dental crown, you commit to a procedure that requires you to care for the restoration and the underlying tooth. While dental crowns help restore broken, damaged, or decayed teeth with durable tooth caps, they require care specifically with eating, whether you have temporary crowns or permanent crowns on your damaged tooth.

What Does the Dental Crown Procedure Entail?

The dental crown procedure entails at least two visits to the Phoenix dentist to prepare your tooth for fixing and receiving temporary crowns over the prepared tooth that remains in your mouth for three weeks. You must revisit the dentist three weeks later when the professional cements the permanent crown over your tooth. Meanwhile, you must endure the restrictions on the foods you can or cannot have with the temporary crowns.

The restrictions imposed upon you include avoiding sticky and chewy foods with the potential to grab and pull at the temporary restoration. In addition, you must avoid biting hard foods that can dislodge the crown or break it. You must eat from the opposite side of the mouth away from the affected tooth and also exercise caution when flossing your teeth by sliding dental floss between teeth instead of lifting the floss out to prevent dislodging of the temporary restoration.

What Must You Avoid Eating after Getting a Permanent Crown?

After you get your permanent crown over the tooth, you must avoid foods rich in sugar because they damage your teeth, whether restored or not. Following placement of the permanent crown, you must refrain from eating nuts, crunchy vegetables, fruits, sticky foods, chewing gum, raisins, steak, and dried fruits. The restrictions are merely for the crowned tooth and not the rest of your mouth. You can eat the foods described herein from the other side of your mouth, ensuring you don’t bite with the restored tooth.

You must also exercise care when flossing your teeth and follow the instructions of the dentist near you using similar techniques to floss your teeth as you did with the temporary crowns.

Can You Eat Chips with a Permanent Crown?

You can inquire with the dental crown provider about the food to eat after a Crown, confident that the professional will not recommend not eating chips with the permanent restoration. However, you must wait for the dental cement to adhere securely to the underlying tooth before you start biting chips with the fixed tooth. Meanwhile, if you cannot hold yourself back, you can eat chips from the other side of your mouth to safeguard your dental crown.

How Long Does It Take for Permanent Crown Cement to Set?

When dentists fix your tooth with a permanent Crown, they use special dental cement to achieve their goal. Although the cement bonds restoration to your tooth and is hardened using ultraviolet light, it requires time to set before you can use the restored tooth, like your remaining teeth.

Initially, the dentist restricts you from eating anything until the anesthesia provided during the restoration wears off to prevent incurring injuries to your mouth and needing additional treatments. The anesthesia requires at least four hours before you feel comfortable eating and chewing foods.

With permanent crowns, you find it beneficial to avoid sticky and hard foods during the initial 24 hours. After that, you can start eating, drinking, and cleaning your tooth. However, you might experience sensitivity and tenderness around the crown during the first few weeks. The sensitivity emanates from the dental work to fix your tooth and remains with you for a few weeks before it subsides. Therefore it helps if you have a diet of soft foods for a few weeks after fixing your tooth.

If you experience excessive pain, bleeding, swelling or reaction to medications the dentist provides, you shouldn’t hesitate to call the Phoenix dentist for assistance as soon as possible.

Although fixing a damaged tooth is not challenging with a dental crown, you must prepare yourself to endure some challenges with the foods you have for a few weeks following the procedure. After that, you can use the restored tooth, remaining careful not to damage porcelain crowns if you have them as restorations.

All Smiles Dental Care provides dental crowns to patients instructing them to follow their instructions stringently to ensure they don’t develop complications with their restored tooth. If you need dental crowns and are apprehensive about when you can eat after fixing your tooth, please arrange a meeting with this practice to educate yourself and receive the restoration over your tooth.