How to have a tooth extraction with grace and ease
Releasing your tooth with ease
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No one wants to lose a tooth, but sometimes a tooth extraction is necessary. By the time you are considering an extraction, it’s usually the end of a long series of attempts to try almost every other possible way to restore and repair the tooth. Unfortunately, eventually, sometimes you just run out of good alternatives and have to let the tooth go. I see a lot of preventative advice about how to avoid reaching the end of that road to extraction. Most dentists are quick to offer an implant to fill the gap afterward. This article is offers support for the experience of releasing a tooth with grace and ease when it really is the best decision at a certain point in time. |
Pulling teeth doesn’t have to be brutal
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Once pulling teeth was almost the first resort of some mid-twentieth-century dentists, and now it’s usually the last resort when you’ve tried everything else. Unfortunately, it’s still standard practice for many orthodontists to recommend removing healthy wisdom teeth or premolars from young mouths. When healthy teeth are removed the physical challenges may be similar to medically necessary extractions (see my tips below) but the emotional implications are often postponed for decades. I have met with many adults filled with regret and delayed grief for the adult teeth that were pulled out in their teens before they understood the implications. Deciding to extract an unhealthy tooth as an adult can be an opportunity to heal the old trauma of the earlier loss of healthy teeth by releasing your old regrets and grief. |
Dear tooth, I honour the life you shared with me and release you with love.
You can choose to turn your tooth extraction experience into a portal of profoundly transformational healing.
Download the 7-minute long MP3 audio recording to meditate with and/or use as journaling prompts.
Top tips for an uncomplicated extraction
After a tooth has been extracted, a clot will form over the extraction site. This clot is what will keep you from developing a dry socket (and possibly its long-term complication of cavitation) so you want to encourage the clot to stay in place for 5-10 days.
You’ll be able to see the clot in your gums as a black spot that gets smaller day by day, eventually getting lighter in color and disappearing completely.
The following tips are all about helping a healthy clot to form a secure attachment and stay in place until it dissolves or falls out naturally.
1. Schedule at least 24 hours to rest and recuperate from a tooth extraction. You may have a very easy experience in the dental chair and feel fine afterwards, but losing a tooth is still a big adjustment for your body. Immediately after a tooth extraction is not the time to take any exercise, including walking more than half a block. If possible you should avoid lifting anything heavy, especially wriggly children. If you had a difficult extraction try to take an additional couple of days off from any kind of exertion.
2. Don’t suck, squirt, or swish anything in your mouth anything until the clot is completely gone. That means don’t drink through a straw, smoke or vape, don’t oil pull, use a mouthwash or water flosser and don’t french kiss or give oral sex until the gum has healed over and you can’t see the clot anymore.
3. Avoid ‘bitsy’ food until the clot is gone. Stick to liquids for the first 24 hours, then eat soft smooth food for at least another couple of days. After day 3 you can start eating chewier food if you want but don’t eat food with little bits, like rice, rolled oats, chopped parsley, or nuts and seeds. Avoid any foods that might scratch at the clot like chips or toast.
A portal for transformational healing
Dear tooth, I honour the life you shared with me and release you with love.
A tooth extraction can carry a heavy emotional burden of fear, grief, disappointment, anger, and/or despair which can add to physical discomfort at the time, and may linger if not acknowledged and integrated.
Creating a healing story to consciously work with the emotions of extraction, along with the meaning of the tooth’s archetype*, can turn an extraction experience into a portal of profoundly transformational healing. It’s one of the most powerful aspects of my work as a natural oral health coach.
I recorded a heartfelt guided meditation called ‘Farewell to a Tooth’ where you can hear my words as though you are speaking directly to a tooth that you need to release or have already lost.
You can stream the meditation for free on Insight Timer or purchase it as an MP3 download to listen offline forever.
*Tooth Archetypes are the unique emotional associations of each individual tooth, described in my book, The Secret Lives of Teeth.
Dear tooth, I honour the life you shared with me and release you with love.
You can choose to turn your tooth extraction experience into a portal of profoundly transformational healing.
Download the 7-minute long MP3 audio recording to meditate with and/or use as journaling prompts.
Ease your anxiety before you next dental visit
Calm & Confident in the Dental Chair is an interactive workbook for adults who are anxious about seeing the dentist, with accessible exercises, insightful journaling and simple tips to help you show up relaxed and stay at ease through any kind of dental visit.
Has a dentist told you that your cavities or receding gums are your fault because you are drinking too much Coke, you don’t floss enough or you need to stop breastfeeding your baby? And you know that isn’t true!
I’m a natural oral health coach and I’m not going to blame you or shame you.
The underlying causes of your oral health issues are not your fault!
Nature or nurture, ancestry or environment, free will or systemic oppression, unconscious emotions or the degraded food system are the factors that make your teeth and gums vulnerable to disease.
Even though your tooth decay and gum disease is not your fault, it is within your power to change.
I can help you to turn your oral health around with natural strategies, healthy habits and intuitive insights.
