Dental Implants and… Your Period

Being born a woman means being dependent on your menstrual cycle throughout your entire life. It’s neither good nor bad, it’s just the way it is. All you can do is deal with it and make yourself as comfortable and possible during this hard week in a month. Sometimes you also need to adjust your schedule to it, rescheduling some important events if necessary.

What can be among such events? It depends on how you feel during your menstruation. If you suffer from severe menstrual cramps, you may want to stay at home instead of going to a gym. Some heavy cases of dysmenorrhea can even disable a woman from work and make her take a sick day.

No New Teeth Until Old Blood Is Gone
Visits to doctors and medical procedures also include many cases when you should wait until your menstruation is over. The dental implant procedure falls into that category as well. It needs to be scheduled with the consideration of your menstrual period, no matter how illogical it may sound. Moreover, your dental implant specialist should know when your next menstruation is expected, and if you’re planning a pregnancy or not and whether you are pregnant or breastfeeding at the moment.

What’s the connection between dentistry and reproductive health? The dental implant procedure is an invasive surgery that requires damaging body tissues. They need to heal properly and launch the process of implant fusion. This can become a problem, and not only during the menstrual cycle. A couple of days right before and after it are also not recommended for dental implant procedures.

Why Not?
Menstruation is a special time of the month ruled by hormones. Hormones affect many processes in our bodies and not just the reproductive sphere. A change in the hormonal balance that makes menstruation possible, affects the qualities of blood in general. It becomes significantly lower in thrombocytes, up to 50%. Erythrocytes and hemoglobin levels get increased.

These changes in blood’s biological compound increase the risks to have a severe hemorrhage during the procedure. This may cause the formation of a bruise in your bone tissue. This will trigger the growth of fibrous tissue that simply won’t let an implant fuse properly.

In addition, loss of blood weakens the body, its immunity and the ability to heal wounds and fuse foreign bodies. This is why you need to wait until your hormones come back to their usual balance after menstruation.

Menstruation isn’t the only limitation related to a woman’s reproductive health. It is not recommended to get pregnant for several months after an implant was installed. It’s important to keep the immunity on a proper level to avoid the failure of your fresh implant.

After the labor, you also can’t get your dental implants installed right away. Three months should pass after you’re quit breastfeeding. A woman’s body loses vitamins and nutrients with her breast milk and it’s not strong enough to fuse an implant yet.

For women in menopause, the main risk is osteoporosis that affects bone tissue’s density. However, modern dentistry has different approaches and this risk can be minimized by proper choice of dental implants and qualified work of implant specialists.