Are you a smoker? Smoking cigarettes can take its toll on your health and your dentures; especially the heavy nicotine turning everything in its path, yellow and since the material used to make dentures is porous the smell of cigarettes can sometimes linger, not to mention the color changes of your dentures.
We've tested out a few different household items to see how they cleaned and freshen up our dentures after a smoker.
First we tried household baking soda. One teaspoon in a cup of warm/hot water and stir completely until all the baking soda was dissolved.
After a few hours we not only noticed a cleaner denture, but whiter teeth. This is definitely a plus and cheaper alternative. Plus baking soda helps to eliminate odor.
Our second option was vinegar.
Mixing 1 tablespoon vinegar and 1 cup of warm water, this worked to neutralize the cigarette smell but now we had a vinegar smell. To diminish the smell of vinegar we soaked our dentures in the baking soda.
Not recommended unless you like the taste of vinegar.
Third choice was a 1/2 teaspoon of Clorox bleach with 2 cups of water.
We soaked our dentures for only 30 minutes then took them out and noticed that our cigarette smell was gone, but the palate denture area were dry.
Lastly we tried dawn dish soap.
1 drop in a cup of warm water soaked dentures for 2 hours.
This seems to work very well! You do not want to clean your dentures very often with Dawn dish soap as the dish soap can dry out the acrylic resins used to make your dentures and overtime cause your dentures to become dry and brittle. So use this choice with caution.
Other options are to try a non-alcohol based mouthwash with baking soda for 3 hours.
How to Remove Cigarette Smell from Dentures