Let's hit that big ticket item right up front, shall we? I don't accept money or consideration for my opinions. If
some company wanted to toss me a big bag of money, I would accept it if their product met my personal requirements of
being safe, affordable, easy enough to use, and add value to our life with dentures. I would also disclose that I was
compensated or offered consideration, but it has never happened to this point. All of my opinions are mine and I say it
like it is, good, bad, or ugly. In short, I save you from the bad or ugly because I really only tell you about the good,
thus, saving you time and energy!
OK, Let's look at what I used along the way.
Before I get into the soft liner materials, I want to make a very important note... NONE of these products - not one of
them - is designed to FIX ill fitting dentures... in fact, ALL of them will tell you to get to the dentist and FIX your
dentures FIRST.
I agree! These are ALL designed for nothing more than a soft lining for WELL FITTING dentures. If your dentures are not
fitting right BEFORE using this stuff, go in and get a new hard reline - or even new dentures from scratch if you must.
With that - let's talk abotu soft liner material...
The first thing I had was from the dentist, Doc had a medicated soft lining material, and I asked him where I could
get that. Medicated means I cannot, so I found Perma Soft. Perma Soft is just like what Doc had, without the medicated
aspect to it - both had to be mixed before use.
Perma Soft: I can recommend it, because I used it, and it worked well. You have to mix it up, and that
might take a few attempts to get right. Once you know how to do it, you will be fine. I never had a problem with Perma
Soft. Here is the link:
Something Else: I forget the name of it, and it doesn't matter, because you can't buy whatever it
was anyway. I had started to buy this, instead of Perma Soft, because it was slightly less expensive, and I could
buy it from CVS locally, and they always seemed to have a few on hand... but whoever had it, stopped making it, and
I think it had something to do with a health issue for people who did not keep it clean, I forget the exact reason,
but it went off the market. At this point, I found Cushion Grip, and it was easier to use, and just $7 per tube!
Cushion Grip: Merck owned Cushion Grip, excellent product at just $7 per tube, it was great, easy
to use, easy to work with, done! Merck sold Cushion Grip as part of a sale they made to Bayer AG, and I have not
seen or heard anything about it since.
Amazon.com has a tube of the stuff for $238! That is insanely expensive!
Comfort Lining:I just found another item, which seems to be relatively new, and is a direct replacement
for Cushion Grip. This product is called Comfort Lining, and the website is simple enough. Allow me to give you
the link to them:
Look, Cushion Grip worked great, that is why we all used it. No mixing and you just use it. Easy enough, but still a pain
to remove, it lasted a long time. The box says four days - too funny, if you clean your dentures constantly, like I do,
the stuff can last MONTHS!
I have never used Comfort Lining, and they should contact me and send me a tube for review. "Free" advertising if I love
stuff, on a website that has a world wide audience! And, according to their site, they ship worldwide (to places that get
mail, of course).
Now, I figured that if I waited long enough, someone with a bit of chemistry education - or someone who knew someone who
had that - would reverse engineer Cushion Grip - but make it that much better.
Drop me a line if you have any first hand experience with it. If these folks have a good, safe, easy to use product,
I'd be willing to shoot a video about it in review... being a direct replacement for Cushion Grip, it sounds like a
winner... but they also need to be smart in business, or we all end up in the same place again... looking for another
replacement!
D.O.C. Reline it Here is the link to D.O.C. Reline It
. This is something I just picked up to see if it would work, and it does, at a more affordable price point than
some other mixes... but you have to mix it up. If you mess it up, you have to try again, which is probably the main
reason why so many of us went to Cushion Grip (I still have some from when it was just $7 per tube!).
CUSHION CORRECT EZ: This is available online, and the reports are that it is like Cushion Grip. I have
not personally used this product, but I believe that I am going to give it a try, just to review for others who simply
cannot afford the insane price for Cushion Grip (like myself!). Here is the link to Japanese Soft Denture Liner.
The packaging for this product is completely in Japanese, however, there is a pdf file with an English
translation, and - from what I can see, it is exactly the same use as Cushion Grip, apply it the same
way, use it the same way. I'll have a link to that pdf once I reloacte it again.
Cleaning the denture: Denture cups for soaking dentures suck. They are too small and confining
for the denture. I use the clear plastic reusable food containers (the ones with the screw on top). I use the small
one because it is bigger than the denture cup made for dentures, but not too big to have them sliding all over the
place. I use some regular household bleach on them.
I use straight bleach in the cap of the jug it comes in and I brush my dentures with that. I let them sit for a little
while while I brush my mouth out with toothpaste. I then re-brush my dentures with straight bleach and then anti
bacterial hand soap or toothpaste twice and rinse very well with a lot of water to make sure all the bleach is gone
before I put them back in my mouth... bleach is NOT good for your mouth. Even a little will "burn" the inside of your
mouth and is not good. Be Careful!
Let me see if I have anything else I wanted to cover...
The whitest shade of white for dentures that I know of today is still mine - PW7 (or equivalent). The next whitest
is PW4 and TruByte came out with a PW2, which is slightly less white than PW4, but much whiter than B1, which is
whiter than A1. I recommend the whitest white because things get dirty. If you do not ever use bleach, and only
use toothpaste or hand soap (or other cleaners), your dentures WILL get darker - it just happens. Bleach will bring
them back to white, but you cannot make anything whiter than it originally was because that color is made through
the whole tooth!
Dentures are smooth on the outside because they can be, and look most natural that way, if they are not smooth
on the outside, your dental professional can polish them smooth for you. They are ROUGH on the inside to match
your mouth. A soft reline will match your mouth better and can compensate for minor changes that the hard plastic
will not be able to do. I would suppose that this could mean that the inside of a denture that will be using a soft inner
liner could be smooth as well, because the soft reline will do the job. The inside can be rough for quite a few reasons
that I won't rattle off, a rough interior of a denture helps hold them still.
I rarely use and adhesives because I do not need them, but if I wanted to, I would use the Fixodent Control for the
lower and the Fixodent Extra Hold Powder for the upper. The powder does not do well on the lower, but the paste on
the upper is hell, so you would need both. The extra hold power is applied by cleaning the denture, then leaving it a little
wet, not too wet though or the powder will wash right out. SPRINKLE a light coat of the powder over the entire inside of
the denture, then use a few drops of water over that. Then, just pop them in your mouth and bit lightly on them. You
feel them firming into place, it is kind of neat really.
Experiment with the process and within a week, you will be an expert on how to use it best for you...
Immediate Dentures: Immediate dentures are the ones that you get when the final teeth are extracted
and they slap in your new teeth. They will not fit perfectly - if they did, you got lucky! As your mouth heals and the swellings
go down, you will need several adjustments and an eventual hard reline. The "immediate" denture, should be your first permanent
denture. If it fits and works, why spend more money?!? Use it until it doesn't work for you.
IF ANY DENTURE DOES NOT FIT - GO GET IT FIXED - not doing so will cause you health problems later!
That said, I had all my upper teeth removed and the immediate denture matched the color of my lower teeth - ugh! When I
had the lowers extracted, the upper was not going to match anything, so I had a complete new set made. I have had a new
upper made since then, for that set, (I dropped, and broke the other one) and I have had a complete new set made as well
since then - now I have two sets, but like the older set better... UPDATE, I now like the newer set better. I must have skilled
myself with the soft reline so that it just fits better now with no discomfort. I would like to have this newest set remade from
scratch - because I think the process failed, but these fit will, look great and get the job done for now.
You can soak any denture in just plain water... I would suggest filtered water if you have a filter thing on your sink. I have the
commercial orange plastic soft reline that I do myself. In the USA, you can buy this at almost any drug store. It replaced the
system that we used to use where we had to mix up our own material. That system worked great, but got pulled off the market
a while back. The new orange stuff takes a little bit of getting used to, but once you are - it is great - better than the old system,
nothing to mix up!
Oh, you can also re-apply on top of it. If you did not use enough, just wait until you can remove the denture - about twenty minutes
or so... carefully dry the denture and orange stuff, then apply some more. The denture has to be dry, water under the orange stuff will
lead to a failure of it to stick to the denture. I have not removed it yet, because I clean my denture with bleach. Bleach dries stuff
out - meaning the orange stuff shrinks.
On that note, if my denture is nice and clean, I can re-apply some of the orange liner to it. If, on the other hand, I see a dot, or
ANY discoloration in the orange material, I remove the soft lining, clean the denture completely and start over. The spot will normally
look greenish or black. What that is, to the best of my knowledge, is either a food particle that got stuck in, or under the soft lining,
or plaque - or some other nasty thing that would harm natural teeth.
I don't play around with potential "dirt" getting in my soft lining, If it is there, I remove the lining and re-apply it. I typically find a
particle of food that might get under the lining is near the edge. If so, I can peel back the lining and brush that out - everything is fine.
If it is not possible to brush the particle off, or it is way under the lining, I remove the lining and replace it. I have never had the feeling
that I did not get a full use out of this type of soft lining, it has been great so far.
That's about it for now...
4 April 2010
I decided to leave this older note as it has some good information in it
OK, I have got the new site all established using the php file coding. All of the pages are hand coded now and I am using php server
side includes and cascading style sheets to manage (more efficiently) the website. All of my sites, I have four, will be updated using
this much better technology.
I still have to come back over this denture site to update the content so that it is much easier to read. Less "sandpaper across the
eyes" and more to the point. The problem is that I had sort of made the site (originally) as a diary for those also going through the
process of obtaining dentures, then discussing the mini dental implants (I have six, not just four).
I see this site maturing into two types of information, the original purpose to enlighten those who want to know about the process,
and additional information for once they have their dentures. I also see denture wearers looking for information relating to the continued
care of their dentures.
All of the pictures that you see on this site show my original "immediate" denture followed by my original upper and lower set of dentures
using the PW7 color (the whitest teeth they make). I no longer have that original denture. Somewhere along the way, I did indeed drop it
and had a new upper made. The lowers I still have, the new upper matches those. I also broke a tooth on the new upper and thought that
I'd have to have yet another new upper made, but they can order one tooth and fix it... so I did that and saved a bunch of cash.
I have also been back to have a complete new set of dentures made. This is important as we will all need to eventually replace our dentures.
Of course, my new dentures are made with PW7 white teeth. They are also designed to show a little more of the teeth, as the healing process
had my teeth kind of vanishing behind my lips a bit. The new teeth look fantastic! They do not fit perfectly though. In the process of being
made, they got, what appears to be extra material "cooked" onto the gums of the denture. I cannot really explain this perfectly, but it requires
a lot of trimming of the inside of the denture so that they fit well.
Due to some other situations in my life, the fitting process is going very slowly right now. I expect to ramp up the process over the next few
weeks and have a great fitting set of new dentures working well by May of 2010.
On this site, I am going to add a page, kind of like a blog that does not update every day, but from time to time. The main portions of the site
should "lock in" and become permanent, but I want to have one page where I can drop in and make updates. This home page will also update
from time to time - you may have noticed that anyway.
Well, for now, stay tuned, share the site and make sure your links are updated. Come back often as I continue to update this site. Oh, the
thumbnails with the blue border are clickable so that you can see the larger original picture. They load a little slower than the whole page because
I am not using actual thumbnails, but forcing the pictures to only display at 75 pixels wide. It is worth the slight wait for the thumbnails to load.
If you want to see the big picture, if it has a blue border - most do - then you will see the large original shot.
Come back often and visit, and remember that I answer all emails as fast as I can. Best wishes, always!
My email address changed, I am making the correction in all these pages, ray@rayhayden.us is correct, long story
on why I let the vdo1.us site expire...
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