I Took My Bottom Teeth Out Every Time I Ate for 3 Years. Then My Dentist Showed Me It Was Never My Fault.

By Diane R., 62

Full dentures since 59 · 8 min read

Every day at 12:15, I walked out to my car.

I told the girls at work I liked to listen to my book at lunch. That wasn't true.

I'd lock the doors. I'd check the mirror. Then I'd reach in, take out my bottom teeth, and wrap them in a paper napkin on the seat next to me.

Then I ate my sandwich. Little bites. With my gums.

I did that five days a week for three years.

My top plate was always fine. The bottom one started moving a few months after I got it. It never stopped. So one day I just quit. I wore my teeth for other people. I took them out to eat.

I really thought that was just my life now.

I Got Really Good at Not Eating in Front of People

You learn the tricks fast.

"I already ate." "I'm not that hungry." "Just a coffee for me." I had a line ready for every meal.

When the office got pizza, I sat in the break room with a shake and smiled. When friends went out to dinner, I ordered soup and made it last. Some nights I drank a shake in the car on the way, so I wouldn't be hungry at the table.

And the second I got home, before I even put my purse down, the bottom teeth came out.

I wasn't living with my dentures. I was hiding from them.

Nobody knew. I made very sure of that.

The Birthday Where I Didn't Eat a Thing

My grandson Tyler turned eight in June.

The whole family came to my daughter's house. Pizza, cake, kids running everywhere. I sat at the end of the table with a cup of coffee and an empty plate. I told everyone I'd eaten before I came.

Tyler sat next to me with frosting all over his face. He looked at my plate. Then he looked up at me and asked, the way kids do:

"Grandma, how come you never eat with us?"

Everyone laughed. I laughed too. I said something about watching my figure.

Then I sat in my car outside her house and cried for twenty minutes before I could drive home.

He had noticed. Of course he had. I was so busy hiding it, I never thought about what he was seeing.

Cream. Powder. Strips. Same Ending.

I want to be fair. Before I gave up, I really did try.

Cream came first. A thin line, press it in, and for a little while it felt steady. But by the middle of a meal, I could feel the back of the bottom plate lift. By lunch it was soft and gummy. I'd be in a bathroom stall scraping it off and putting more on.

Then powder. Tight for a few minutes. Then gritty. Little bits came out along my gums every time I chewed.

Then strips. Soft at first. Halfway through a sandwich they slid, and I'd be fishing one out with my tongue.

I spent a whole year trying. Then I did what a lot of us do. I decided my mouth was just wrong. Maybe I was doing it wrong. Maybe nothing works on the bottom. Maybe that's just how it is.

So I stopped trying, and started taking my teeth out.

Then I Told My Dentist the Truth

After Tyler's birthday, I went back to my dentist, Dr. Miller. My daughter drove me.

This time I told him everything. The car. The napkin. The shakes. The birthday.

He didn't laugh. He just nodded, like he'd heard it a hundred times.

He had me bite down. He pressed on the front of my bottom plate, and we both watched the back of it lift up.

Then he took an X-ray and turned the screen toward me.

"See this line?" he said, and pointed with his pen. "That's your jaw bone. Look how low and thin it is in the back."

I didn't understand. My teeth looked the same as the day I got them.

"Your teeth didn't change, Diane," he said. "Your jaw did."

He Showed Me the Space

Then he picked up a plastic model of a jaw and set a bottom plate on top of it.

"Look underneath," he said.

There was a gap. A real gap, between the plate and the gum. When he pressed the front, the back lifted right up.

"That's what's going on in your mouth," he said. "Your plate is sitting on a space."

I sat in that chair and felt something I hadn't felt in three years.

It wasn't my fault.

Why the Cream Never Had a Chance

Then I asked him the question I'd been asking myself for three years.

"So why didn't the cream work?"

He smiled, kind of sad. "Cream is glue, Diane. Glue sticks two things that touch. Your plate and your gum don't touch anymore."

He drew it for me on a notepad. The cream sits on top of the space. It doesn't fill it. Then spit gets in from the sides. It breaks the cream down in a few hours.

"That's why you feel it lift by lunch," he said. "It's not you. It's not how you put it on. Glue just can't fill a space."

Then he said something I'll never forget. Even the FDA says it, he told me. "Properly fitting dentures should not require additional adhesive."

"If you need more and more glue," he said, "that's your mouth telling you the fit changed."

I thought about that whole shelf of half-used tubes in my bathroom.

I'd spent three years trying to glue a space.

"There's Only One Way to Fix a Space"

"You fill it," Dr. Miller said.

Then he tore a page off his notepad and wrote down my choices.

A professional reline. That's where they fill the space for you. His next opening was seven weeks away.

New dentures. A thousand dollars or more.

Implants. Eleven thousand dollars and up. For one jaw.

And on the top, he underlined two words. Fill the space.

I asked him, "Is there anything I can do now? Something in between?"

He said, "Whatever you do, more glue won't fix this. You need something that fills the space."

I drove home with that note in my purse, doing math I didn't want to do.

Something That Fills the Space

That night I couldn't sleep. I sat at the kitchen table with my phone and typed almost exactly what he said.

Something that fills the space under my denture.

That's how I learned about at-home reliners.

A reliner is not glue. It's a soft gel you put in yourself, at home.

You lay a thin line inside the plate. You press it in and bite down. The gel molds into the space between your gum and the plate. So the plate sits snug again.

It doesn't sit on top of the space like cream. It fills it. And because it isn't glue, spit doesn't wash it out by lunch. One time holds for two or three days.

And it doesn't pretend to be forever. It's made for the weeks and months until you can get back to your dentist. The something in between.

For the first time in three years, it all made sense. Not "stronger hold." Not "new formula." Just fill the space.

The one I found was called Aeva.

What Made Me Finally Order

I'll be honest. I went to bed thinking it would just be one more tube for the shelf. I'd given up on my bottom plate for a reason.

The next night I read everything on their website. I was looking for the catch.

What kept me reading was that they said the same thing Dr. Miller said. The problem is the space. Fill the space.

Then one thing made it easy.

They have a 90-day money-back guarantee. If it didn't work on my bottom plate, I could send it back and get my money back.

Three years of eating in my car, I thought. What's 90 days?

I ordered it that night.

The First Bite

I put it in on Sunday night.

I dried the inside of my bottom plate. I laid in a thin line, like the box said. I pressed it in and bit down for about thirty seconds.

That was it. A light mint smell. No paste on my fingers.

Monday morning, I stood in the kitchen and looked at the fruit bowl. I hadn't bitten into an apple in three years.

I picked one up. I bit right into it. The plate didn't move.

I laughed out loud. My husband grabbed his phone and asked what was so funny. I couldn't even answer him.

That day at 12:15, I picked up my sandwich. And I didn't walk to the car.

I sat at my desk. I took a real bite. Then another. Nothing moved.

I ate the whole thing at my desk, with my teeth in, in front of everyone. Nobody noticed a thing. And that was the whole point.

I Went Out to Lunch

That Friday, the girls asked if I wanted to come to the diner. They had stopped asking a long time ago. They asked anyway.

I said yes.

I ordered a cheeseburger. I hadn't ordered a cheeseburger in three years.

I ate it. I laughed at Karen's story about her husband and the lawn mower. And I didn't think about my bottom plate once. Not once.

The Things I Don't Do Anymore

It's been four months now. I put it in every two or three days. At night I rinse my plate. That's my whole routine.

Some days I forget I ever lived the other way. So I wrote it down. Here's what I don't do anymore:

• Walk out to my car at 12:15 to eat alone.
• Keep paper napkins in the glove box for my teeth.
• Say "I already ate" when I'm starving.
• Look up the menu before we go out, to find something soft.
• Push my tongue on my plate all through dinner to hold it down.
• Cover my mouth when I laugh.
• Leave a party early so I can go home and take my teeth out.
• Sit in the car and cry before I drive home.

And here's what I do now:

• Bite into an apple, standing in my kitchen.
• Order what I want. Steak. Corn. A cheeseburger.
• Say yes when the girls ask me to lunch.
• Laugh with my head back and my mouth wide open.
• Sit at the table with my family. And eat. The whole meal.

"Grandma! You're Eating!"

Last month we had a cookout in my daughter's backyard. Burgers, corn, the whole family.

I sat down on the bench next to Tyler. I picked up an ear of corn. And I bit right into it.

He stopped chewing. His eyebrows went way up. "Grandma! You're eating!"

I said, "I sure am, buddy." Then he picked up his corn, and we raced. Butter on both our chins. He won. I let him.

And two weeks ago, it was my daughter's birthday. We all went out for dinner. Eight of us at one long table.

I ordered the steak.

My son-in-law told a story I'd heard ten times, and I laughed so hard I had to put my fork down. Tyler leaned on my shoulder the whole night.

Nobody at that table knew what that dinner meant to me. And that's exactly how I wanted it.

I'm not the grandma who "already ate" anymore. I'm just Grandma. At the table. With everyone.

I didn't cry in the car that night. Well, maybe a little. The good kind.

What I Wanted to Know Before I Ordered

You Have Two Choices

Fall Sale · Buy 2, Get 1 Free

Aeva Denture Reliner

• Fills the space between your gum and your plate, instead of gluing over it
• Soft gel that molds to your gum so the plate sits snug
• Holds two to three days each time. Nothing to put back on at lunch
• Made for the bottom plate that cream could never hold
• Zero zinc. Goes in at home in about a minute

90-Day Money-Back Guarantee

Try it for 90 days. If it doesn't work for you, send it back for a full refund.

Try Aeva — Buy 2, Get 1 Free →

Buy 2, Get 1 Free · Ships from the US

If You're Reading This With Your Teeth in a Napkin

I've told this story to a few people now. Twice, someone went quiet. Then they told me, very softly, that they take theirs out to eat too.

I know that quiet. I lived in it for three years.

If you've given up on your bottom plate, if you eat in the car, or at home with your teeth on the counter, please hear what Dr. Miller told me. It isn't you. It isn't how you put the cream on. It's the space.

Glue can't fill a space. A reliner can.

I left the link below. I hope it gets you back to the table, the way it got me back to mine.

Diane