Well, even with insurance, I needed 2 root canals and crowns on molars, which was going to be about $500/tooth. Extraction was $50. Guess which one I had to do? So I have 2 teeth missing (thankfully not visible) until I can afford implants. And that was WITH insurance. I’ll never understand why dentistry is so damned expensive and barely covered on insurance.
When I have tooth nightmares, what you just described is what I see when I look in the mirror at my mouth. :eek: ::shudder::
Thanks a lot, nashiitashiie. If I have tooth nightmares tonight, I’m blaming you!
I am no sure about you, but being able to eat without pain is one of the major factors in my quality of life, worth quite a bit…
:smack: :dubious: 
Hence why not spend the money for dentures and not deal with the dentist? I’m willing to spend money on my choppers, but at some point it just seems a waste. Kind of like trying to keep an old car on the road. At what point do you give up and get something new?
Well, from what I have heard from people with dentures, they really are not a panacea to the problem. Lots of people have trouble with them, and because they block out part of the top of your mouth, food loses some of its taste. My grandmother lost about 20 pounds after she got hers, because she cannot eat as many things as she used to and it does not taste as good (or so she says). Going by that, I am devoted to keeping as much as I can of my teeth for as long as I can.
My SO has pretty good insurance, and even a decent dental plan, from his job.
He had to have partial dentures below, and full dentures above…total cost to us, after insurance: $13,000!
That doesn’t include the extra visits he has had to make in the past two years since.
How many of you have an extra $13,000 laying around the house to have a set of dentures made for you?
We had heard that too, but my SO claims it is not true. Food tastes good, and he has kept up his appetite and there is not a thing he cannot eat. Then again, for the money we paid, I would sincerely hope so…
As my sister’s dentist told her, “Dentures are not an alternative to teeth. They are an alternative to no teeth.”
This has been my experience. After growing up with genetically lousy teeth, a soda habit, and poor brushing habits, I got dentures at 21.
Every ridiculous scare story that dentists told me turned out to be utter BS. I can eat anything except extremely sticky stuff like taffy and gum, things don’t have any less taste, and I certainly didn’t lose any weight because of the things.
I didn’t even get the expensive dentures, either. They’re the middle-of-the-road variety, about $750-1000 for a full set. I’m 29 now and they still fit fine. No complaints whatsoever.
I actually wish the dentists hadn’t contiuously lied through their teeth (heh) about them and scared me away so I could have gotten them even sooner instead of having to deal with the unspeakable pain I had to endure during those last couple of years that I had real teeth.
Jesus Christ! Are they diamond encrusted?! I think my procedure was around $2000 for the dentures and extraction combined. They didn’t charge me for the half-dozen or so follow-up visits. This was without insurance, BTW.
When I lost my upper set (long, drunken story), I went to a place that specialized in dentures to have them replaced, since I no longer lived in the same state as my old dentist. Cost me $350. That was in 2006.
Consider the possibility that while your dentures may have been preferable to your original (defective) teeth in your case, they might not be superior to a truly health set of natural teeth.
My mother says her dentures are nowhere near as good as when she had healthy teeth, but when she got her teeth pulled (because they were falling out and her gums were rotting) she said the dentures were better than the horrible pain she’d been having for several years prior to that time. She also started eating better after she got her dentures (finally) fitted and adjusted because they were functioning better as teeth than the loose nasties she had had just prior to extraction.
Which, to my mind, is when a person should get dentures. You shouldn’t get dentures to replace HEALTHY teeth, you should get them when dentures would function/feel better than teeth that aren’t healthy and can’t reasonably be repaired.
Well, considering the effort and cost of upkeep, I really do prefer the dentures. I don’t have to worry about yellowing, I don’t have to worry about flossing (I just take 'em out and rinse them in the sink if something gets stuck), and I haven’t felt even a tiny bit of pain in my mouth in years. It’s fantastic! 
My husband is embarrassed by his lower teeth, which are clean and white and crooked as all get out. Fiscal irresponsibility on the part of his father growing up meant that the money dried up after they fixed the top teeth but before the bottom ones. He’s still rather bitter.
I, on the other hand, never darkened the door of a dentist until I was 16 (when we finally got insurance). No dental insurance plus a “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” attitude on the part of my parents. I have great teeth, or so says my current dentist. Not a filling or a bad one in the bunch. She attributes it to fluoridated water and my tendency not to eat many sweets.
Fluorine and money are your teeth’s friends.
I hate to trot out this old mantra, but anecdote isn’t he plural of data. My experience is precisely the opposite; I ate terribly as a kid, and my kid (and other children I know) eat far less sugar and pop. They’re banning soda machines in high schools; when I was in high school I practically lived on Coke out of the pop machine. When I was a kid, every kid’s allowance pretty much existed to keep them in candy.
I read an article in the National Post last year in which a columnist/mother talked about how her daughter’s friends were amazed they had sweets and pop in their house; in most of their homes such things were limited, if not nonexistent.
You’re blaming two problems on worsening diets - obesity and dental problems - but I don’t buy the second problem is actually increasing. Again, the OP moved from a richer placeto a poorer place. I’ve seen no evidence that dental problems are getting worse now, over time, than they were before. It’s certainly my subjective impression that older people have horrible teeth but that’s not meaningful evidence; however, absent evidence to the contrary, I have to assume that dental problems are not increasing.
I DO agree obesity is a problem; however, it’s not necessarily the case that this is the result of more sweets. It could simply be that children are less physically active than they once were. Again, that fits my subjective impressions, for what that’s worth, which isn’t much, but it’s a perfectly reasonable alternative hypothesis.