Teeth, gums and dry mouth after sixty, written in large print

My name is Harold Benning. I am sixty-eight. I carried mail in Dayton, Ohio for thirty-four years, and I have had the same dentist, Dr. Patel on Far Hills Avenue, for twenty-eight of them. I started this site because the pamphlets they hand you at the dentist are written for someone who is thirty-five, with thirty-five-year-old eyes and a thirty-five-year-old mouth, and I am neither. The type is small, the advice assumes you are not on six medications, and nobody mentions what any of it costs on a fixed income.

So this is in large print, and it is about the mouth I actually have.

What changed after sixty

Three things, and I did not see any of them coming.

My mouth dried up. Not all at once. Around sixty-two my doctor added a water pill to my blood pressure medication and within a few months I was waking up with my tongue stuck to the roof of my mouth and chewing crackers was like eating sand. The National Institute on Aging's page on teeth and mouth says dry mouth is one of the most common problems for older people and that medications are the usual cause. Nobody told me that when they wrote the prescription. I write about what I did in the first article.

My gums pulled back. I noticed it in a photo from my granddaughter's graduation: my front teeth looked longer than they used to. Dr. Patel said recession, said some was age and some was forty years of brushing too hard, and said the exposed roots were why cold water had started to hurt. The second article is about that.

The bills got real. I retired, went on Medicare, and found out that Medicare does not pay for teeth. Not cleanings, not fillings, not the crown I needed in 2023. That one caught me flat-footed and it is the subject of the third article, with the actual numbers.

The breath problem, and what I tried

Dry mouth comes with bad breath. My wife, Donna, is a kind woman but she is honest, and she told me. I tried the dry mouth rinses, the lozenges, the gum, and the sprays. Some helped a little. I write about each of them.

What helped the most was not a product. It was sipping water all day from a bottle I keep in my shirt pocket like I used to keep my route card, and using a humidifier at night. After that, the thing that handled the last of the morning breath was a probiotic tablet called ProDentim that my granddaughter found for me. I chew one every morning after my coffee. I was skeptical, and I say so in the dry mouth article, and I also say what changed and what did not, because I think people my age get sold enough things without me adding to it.

Who this is for

People over sixty. People on blood pressure pills, or antidepressants, or allergy pills, or anything else with "dry mouth" in the list of side effects, which is most of them. People who have gotten a dental bill since retiring and thought there had been a mistake. People whose kids keep sending them links.

I am not a dentist. I have no training. What I have is twenty-eight years with the same one, a habit of asking questions, and a file folder of receipts. Where I say what the dentist said, I say it is what the dentist said. Where I link to something, it is a government health page or a dental association page, because those are the ones that are not selling anything. The NIDCR page on dry mouth is where I would start if you only read one outside thing.

How the site is laid out

Three articles, each one long enough to be useful and written so you do not need to squint. Links to the sources at the bottom of each. No pop-ups, no newsletter, nothing to sign up for. If something I wrote is wrong, my email is at the bottom and I will fix it.

Read the dry mouth one first if your mouth is dry. Read the Medicare one first if you just got a bill. Read the gums one if your teeth look longer than they used to in photographs. I am sorry to say they probably are.

Medicare Does Not Cover Teeth: What a Year of Dental Costs Me at 68Original Medicare pays for almost no dental. What my Advantage plan covers, what a crown and deep cleaning cost me, the dental school option, and prevention.Receding Gums After 60: What Is Normal, What Is Not, What I DidGum recession at 66 from age and forty years of scrubbing: what exposed roots mean, the soft brush fix, when a graft is needed, and where a probiotic fits.Dry Mouth From Blood Pressure Pills: What Helped Me at 68A water pill dried out my mouth at 62: what the dentist found, which rinses helped, why sipping water beat them all, and the probiotic for the morning breath.

Harold Benning carried mail in Dayton, Ohio for thirty-four years and has had the same dentist for twenty-eight of them. He writes for people his age who get handed a bill and a pamphlet and nothing in between.