It’s vitally important to chew food properly in order to maintain healthy digestion. Chewing food insufficiently can lead to digestive problems such as heart burn, indigestion, headaches, constipation and low energy levels. Sound familiar?
The chewing process is the first stage of proper digestion.
By not chewing food effectively, you are prohibiting your body from creating the necessary digestive enzymes, found in saliva, required to break down the larger pieces of food ready for digestion.
You are also restricting the amount of nutrients that your body can take from the food you are consuming. Larger pieces of food are harder to digest and also harder to draw nutrients and vitamins from, which can once again lead to further health complications caused simply by not chewing your food enough.
As many denture wearers know, the less teeth you have, the harder it is to chew food. This is one of many reasons that it’s important to have well fitting, comfortable and most importantly, functional dentures, as they drastically help the effectiveness of chewing food and in turn, reduce the amount of digestion problems mentioned above.
Improper chewing can also lead to a condition known as Gastroesophageal Reflux Disease (GERD). An unpleasant condition where contents from the stomach in the form of foods and liquids can leak back into the oesophagus which in turn, can lead to heartburn and other painful conditions.
Not only is it important to chew your food for digestive reasons, but also for bacteria management.
Chewing food reduces the risk of bacterial overgrowth because sufficiently broken down food can pass through the colon smoothly, reducing bloating and bacteria overgrowth that can be caused when food has not been broken down.
Now we understand the importance of chewing food but how much chewing is enough?
Professionals have suggested that soft food (fruits and vegetables) should be chewed around 5-10 times however, tougher and more dense foods, such as meat and some not so soft vegetables should ideally be chewed up to 30 times.
By chewing these denser foods more, you are allowing the saliva levels to increase and thus increasing the amount of digestive enzymes required for the healthy digestion process to begin.
If you’re a denture wearer without having functioning teeth, you will find it to be a big struggle to effectively chew food.
Here at Kevin Manners Denture Clinics we understand how important it is for these issues to be alleviated wherever possible. We offer a wide range of options to cater to all the needs of our clients, whether it be one tooth that you are missing or all of them, we know that there is always something we can do to help.
If you currently wear dentures but still feel as though you’re struggling to eat properly, it may be that your dentures have worn and they are no longer helping with the chewing of food.
Here at Kevin Manners Denture Clinics we can help with this. Call us today on 0115 941 7052 to book in for a free denture consultation to assess your options with the help of our Clinical Dental Technician (CDT) Kevin Manners.