Nerve Damage from Denture Adhesive OverUse

I’m too weak to walk and almost too tired to care,” she added, her voice dropping to a whisper.

"A couple of years earlier she started “walking like a drunk,” she told the slender, middle-aged doctor. Her legs were weak and her feet were numb. The only feeling she had in them was a pins-and-needles sensation, as if her feet had gone to sleep and never woke up. A few months ago she started falling. She broke her ankle in a particularly bad fall; the ankle got better, but she didn’t. Now she was in a wheelchair.

The Doctor itemized some the possible diagnoses:

• Some type of injury to the spinal cord
•  pressure on the spinal nerves
• A wildly proliferating tumor will sometimes attack nerve cells.
•  cancer could account for her
•  
• A deficiency of vitamin B12 could affect the nervous system and the production of white blood cells. And it was also common in people over 60. The patient remembered being bitten by a mosquito before her symptoms started. Could this be the West Nile virus? It often attacks the spinal cord,

The next morning, results of the blood tests began to roll in. Two were strikingly abnormal: she had almost no copper in her system; and her zinc level was through the roof — more than twice the normal amount.

The Doctor had noticed that her dentures didn’t fit well, even with the adhesive. It’s a common problem. The jawbone recedes after teeth are removed, and dentures often need to be replaced every few years to maintain a good fit. Ahmed asked how much denture cream she used. Oh, a lot, she told him. She went through a tube every day or so. She might use five or six tubes a week.

That was it. When used as instructed, a tube of adhesive should last for a month or more. This woman’s dentures didn’t fit well, so she needed more than the recommended amount to hold them in place. Much more. And she had been doing this for years.

I spoke with the patient recently. It has been a year and a half since The Doctor figured out what the problem was. She was using a denture adhesive that didn’t contain zinc.

Her blood count was back to normal and she felt better. She no longer had the nagging fatigue that plagued her before she went into the hospital, but she still couldn’t walk without a lot of help. She continues to go to physical therapy, but the damage to her nerves may be permanent.

Read the entire NewYork Times article:   http://ow.ly/oigp

. In each of the cases, an extreme amount of denture adhesive was used for years, two or more tubes of product per week, compared with the one tube of product every three to 10 weeks considered typical. What is not in doubt is the strong safety record of zinc-containing denture adhesives. First cleared for marketing in the United States by FDA roughly 15 years ago, these products are very safe when used as directed and adverse events are extremely rare.

Website of a zinc-free denture adhesive:--   http://www.bioforceusa.com/product-finder/secure/index.php 

• ·                                 Secure Denture Bonding Cream
• ·                                 Secure Denture Adhesive Cushion Strips

Other brands identified as being zinc-free

• ·                                 Sea-Bond Denture Adhesive Wafers
• ·                                 Effergrip