Alcohol and Dental implants

The topic today is alcohol and dental implants. There's a great majority of people who drink alcohol. Some do it in moderation. Some do it very heavily. It's going to affect your dental implant surgery, for sure. Let's talk about how it affects it.
In fact, it's going to affect all types of surgery that you have done, whether it's in your mouth or on your back or in your gut. One of the things that alcohol does just in general, if you think about a pregnant woman, avoiding alcohol, is it's going to suppress making cells. It can cause birth defects. It can really change the way that the bone is healing. We rely, especially in the first six weeks or even three to four weeks of the implant being put in into the bone or the bone being built from a dental implant bone graft, that there's a lot of things that your body has to do. Everything has to happen just right for you to form bone, either as a bone graft or form bone around an implant, whether it's a zygomatic implant, a pterygoid implant, a regular dental implant, it doesn't matter.
But so many things have to go right, just like a baby being born. There are so many things that have to go right for there to not be any, let's say, birth defects. Correct? Avoiding alcohol, especially in the few days prior and three to six weeks afterwards, I would really say to six weeks is really critical. Besides during the surgery, it increases your bleeding. If you drink a lot and a lot is sometimes considered a couple beers a night, right? Glass of wine, couple beers a night, that makes you bleed. Our liver makes the components that make our blood clot. In general, people happen to have higher liver enzymes they're called ALT, AST, and that makes us bleed. We can make for a really messy surgery, can put a lot of stress on the surgical team and you bleed a lot afterwards. It's kind of like driving in the fog.
I've done many procedures that are very, very bloody and alcohol was oftentimes one of the reasons that cause it. But, and the other issue is that alcohol interferes with medications, right? You're probably going to be on an antibiotic after having a dental implant surgery, whether it's full mouth or a single one, dental antibiotics are oftentimes needed, sedation medications. Obviously we're either putting you out or moderately sedated for these types of procedure. Alcohol also is not great for that. Alcohol goes hand in hand with smoking. I've got another, a blog video on smoking as well. The saying with smoking is "You can either smoke or you can have teeth, but you can't have both." Many people smoke and drink and have often lost their teeth to periodontal disease. Alcohol is also what they call empty calories and tends to lead to patients that have increased blood glucose or pre-diabetic diabetic. Or maybe you don't even know that you're diabetic in my office. We test you for that, especially if you haven't been to a doctor for a while, we'll test something called A1C and blood glucose levels to possibly see if you have any issues with diabetes.
Alcohol can be used during dental implant healing. I don't want to take away all fun, but it needs to be reduced. Especially if you have a problem with alcohol then maybe this isn't the right time to have these procedures done, maybe we've got to work on some self-reflection and work on ourselves quitting smoking, reducing or quitting alcohol altogether. It definitely slows down healing tremendously. It's one of the reasons that I try to always talk to patients about these things.
It is a part of life, especially around the holidays. Patients ask me, they've gone through surgery. "Hey, when can.. I'm going to the holiday party. When can I start drinking?" Yeah, just a little bit. You don't need to have a lot. Everything in very moderation are very light in the first four to six weeks after the dental implant surgery. Bottom line is alcohol does inhibit the healing of dental implants and bone grafting, causes some safety issues with bleeding, safety issues with anesthesia.
You just want a good result. I want you to have a good result regardless of who's treating you. That this all works out. All right, this is Dr. Ramsey Amin, Burbankdentalimplants.com. Leave some questions down below. We'll talk about it, your unique situations. Of course, if there's a problem with alcoholism, that's something you obviously want to seek help for. You may find that the implants don't work at all. I've had some patients that drink so heavily. That just nothing really worked. Oftentimes, the lifestyle that comes with heavy alcohol use lends itself to habits that aren't so aren't so healthy. I'll leave it at that. Thank you so much. I'll see you soon. Bye.