Dirty Dentures? Are You At Risk Of MRSA?
My father has false teeth, actually a second pair. A new second pair. I also have a biting block that I have to routinely wear each night for my sleep apnea. The important thing about any false teeth or mouth guard is to keep it clean or it can really wreak havoc on your teeth.
But what got me more frightened recently is that MRSA (Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus) can live in your dental appliances for a long time, and then get breathed in.
MRSA is a very serious Staph infection, and can sometimes be fatal. I found the following excerpt, a great remedy to getting the little buggers off of my dental work.
I always suspect that my dental appliance is sometimes not clean enough, and after I read the following, I felt vindicated. I told my father, and he was also surprised to learn of the dangers of MRSA biofilms.
And I don’t want them in my mouth anyway. Here’s an excerpt:
Dirty dentures? Dangerous MRSA may be lurking, dentists say
(By JoNel Aleccia)
Denture experts say a daily scrub with a stiff brush is vital to removing potentially dangerous biofilms from false teeth. New research also shows that microwaving or soaking in a germicide rinse can disinfect dentures for up to a week.
Here’s some bad news for the estimated 20 million people in the U.S. who wear full or partial dentures: There’s a good chance your choppers are covered with thin layers of icky, sticky bacteria known as biofilms.
Worse, some of the biofilm germs may be bad bugs such as MRSA, or drug-resistant staphylococcus aureus bacteria, which can lurk on the dentures until they’re breathed into the lungs, where experts fear they may cause nasty, hard-to-treat infections.
Fortunately, a team of scientists in Brazil has come up with two simple solutions that seem to work: Zap your dentures in the microwave for three minutes, or soak them in a solution of 2 percent chlorhexidine gluconate, a germicidal mouthwash, for 10 minutes.
Either method is enough to disinfect dentures coated with the toughest MRSA biofilms for up to a week, according to a recent study in the Journal of the American Dental Association. A third option, soaking the dentures in sodium hypochlorite, was effective only in the short term…
The article “Dirty dentures? Dangerous MRSA may be lurking, dentists say” was originally posted on http://www.msnbc.com/
I hope this helps you, and please go and read the full article for more details. I’m glad that the simple answers are usually the best ones, and I’ll be nuking my biting block tonight to kill all of the germs that might be there.
Here is another link to MRSA information from WebMD.
