Can You Eat Chips with Permanent Crowns?

When your dentist recommends your damaged or severely decayed tooth is better fortified with a dental crown to safeguard its integrity and functionality, you may wonder what foods you can eat with the protected tooth. Of course, the foremost thought in your mind is that you can have snacks like chips with your favorite soft drinks or cold beverages.

Dental crowns or tooth caps are fabricated from durable materials like porcelain, metals, porcelain fused to metal, and ceramic for mounting on your damaged tooth to restore its strength, appearance, and functionality. However, except for metal crowns, the others remain susceptible to damage if you exert excessive pressure on them by biting chewy and crunchy foods. As a result, they can chip or break to need replacements sooner than anticipated.

Restorative dentistry treatments to fix broken, damaged, or even missing teeth with dental crowns are an accepted practice among dentists involved in these procedures. Therefore while you must remain cautious with some foods after fixing your tooth, you can continue to eat chips using your remaining teeth to enjoy the snacks.

The Dental Crown Procedure

When getting a dental crown to restore your damaged or broken tooth, you must schedule at least two appointments with the nearby dentist to evaluate the condition of your tooth by x-raying it and advising which crown best suits your needs. If you have infections in the tooth, the dentist will suggest a root canal before restoring your tooth. However, they will prepare your tooth for restoration with dental crowns if everything is acceptable.

Dentists generally offer you metal crowns for your molars and suggest porcelain or porcelain fused metal crowns for your visible teeth because they are aesthetic. However, whichever material you choose for the restoration, please expect to receive local anesthesia near the affected tooth. In addition, the dentist must remove significant tooth structure to accommodate the restoration before they impression the tooth to have your crown fabricated from a dental laboratory.

Modern dental treatments do not expose your compromised tooth to further damage but provide temporary acrylic crowns to protect it until your permanent restoration arrives from the dental laboratory. After three weeks, you must revisit the dental office to receive your permanent crown over your tooth.

During your second visit to fix your tooth with the permanent crown, the dentist removes the temporary replacements and cleans your teeth, besides checking the permanent crown for color and fit. If everything is acceptable to the dentist, use special dental cement for the crown before bonding it over your damaged tooth to complete the dental crown procedure.

Caring for the Dental Restoration

You might think your damaged tooth will no longer cause problems because you have it fixed with a durable restoration. However, caring for your tooth remains essential even after fixing it.

The dentist suggests you avoid eating chewy and crunchy foods with the protected teeth after permanent crown placement, depending on the location of the restoration. For example, if you had a tooth in the aesthetic zone fixed, the dentist recommends not to bite chips or other similar foods with the restored tooth because they can get trapped in the restoration causing it to chip or fall off.

The restrictions apply even if you have a posterior restored with a porcelain fused to metal crown because the porcelain covering the metal can chip or break when eating complex foods to require repair or replacement. In addition, if you had a severely decayed tooth restored, you can expect the crown to be larger than the original tooth to cover the decayed portion making it challenging to chew some foods like chips because they can remain in the crown and between the neighboring teeth. Therefore you must adhere to your dentist’s advice and refrain from having crunchy and complex foods with restored teeth by chewing from the other side of your mouth to ensure you don’t damage the restoration.

Problems You Can Encounter When Eating Chips with Permanent Dental Crowns?

While dental crowns fortify your tooth, making them more durable to withstand more wear and tear than an untreated tooth, hard and crunchy foods are better limited with the restoration in your mouth. Such foods require excessive pressure when biting and breaking them. In addition, while the restoration is made from durable materials, they remain susceptible to damage indicating chips will likely cause long-term damage to the crowns. Therefore you must limit biting them with the restored tooth to safeguard the repair.

Fox Creek Dental by Espire Westminster provides dental crowns with adequate instructions on the foods you can or cannot have with them. If you must have a tooth restored, visit them today to fix the damaged tooth.