False Teeth Can End Up in Malnutrition

Fibrous Fruits & Veggies are Avoided by People Wearing Dentures

​Dentures cause discomfort while eating certain foods and certain other foods are ignored completely as they cannot be chewed with dentures on your teeth. Avoiding certain healthy foods can put the wearer at an increased risk of malnutrition, according to one study.

The study holds good for people with tooth loss too. In both sets of people, there is joint and muscle frailty which can leave the individual with risks of bone ruptures and falls.

Foods and Malnutrition
Fibrous fruits and vegetables, nuts and meat that are required for a well-balanced nutritious diet are often ignored by individuals with dentures as they find it difficult to chew or there are also risk of causing damage to the denture due to hard chewing or biting. This is because, although dentures are said to improve chewing function, the force applied while biting certain foods is weaker than the force that can be applied on natural teeth, which means the individual must avoid certain foods.

The study involved 1,800 individuals above the age of 62 who were categorized into three groups: people having at least 20 teeth, those with dentures and fewer than 20 teeth and people with non-dentures and fewer than 20 teeth. The study focuses on the individuals’ BMI, strength, frailty, BMI and oral health and also took note of each person’s nutritional intake.

The study found that:

1. The group with less than 20 teeth and no dentures, and those with dentures were said to consume the least quantity of nutrition-packed foods in comparison to the daily recommended values. They were also found to be the daintiest ones.
2. Individuals with dentures and less teeth were 32% more likely to be fragile and 20% more likely to be nutritionally deficient.
3. There was a greater link between the condition of teeth and deficiency in eating nutrients, irrespective of whether the individual involved in the study wore dentures or not.
   
   

Oral health plays an important role in overall body health as it is the health of the teeth that determines what a person eats. When the individual is unable to eat healthy food due to lack in teeth or oral health, it leads to nutritional deficiencies in later stages of life and causes health problems. Read more on the relationship between oral health and overall body health at www.firsteatright.com.
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While health education focuses on improving nutrition strategies to create awareness among the general public to shift towards healthier foods, minimum importance is given on the influence of teeth on dietary consumption of the older adults. This calls for the need of developing oral health policies to make sure that older adults maintain oral health as much as possible throughout their life tenure.