CLEANING YOUR DENTURES

It is not wise to wear your dentures all day long without giving your gums at least two hours per day to recuperate. If you do, it causes rapid loss of the underlying bony support and its replacement with soft flabby tissue which causes your denture to become unstable. Leaving them out overnight is the best plan.
You also need to clean and deodorize your dentures at least once a day to avoid serious denture breath. Leaving your dentures out overnight and getting into a routine of denture hygiene is the best plan. You can soak them in a commercial denture cleaner, but you can really do a better job and keep them fresher by following these directions:
Brush the dentures thoroughly with a soft brush and plain non abrasive dish detergent or non abrasive toothpastes. Never use abrasive toothpastes or an abrasive powder. Denture teeth are made out of multiple layers of different colored acrylic to make them look more natural, and scrubbing them with abrasive powders like Comet or using hard abrasive brushes will remove layers of the plastic making them look dead and eventually turning them into flat blocks of plastic. Plain dish detergent will work as well as any other cleaner.
Soak them overnight in a dilute solution of laundry bleach. A tablespoon of bleach in 6-8 ounces of water is more than strong enough to remove stains, disinfect and thoroughly deodorize them. Just rinse them off in the morning with copious water before inserting them in your mouth. You will be quite surprised at how much better they smell throughout the day.

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