After surgery, good nutrition can help your body heal faster, boost your immune system and help prevent infections. Eating well following oral surgery, however, can be challenging. Surgical wounds in the mouth, swelling, and limited mobility of the jaw can make it very difficult to eat well. Eating a modified diet can give your body the nutrition it needs without injuring your surgical site.
Liquid Diet
Following oral surgery, your doctor may instruct you to follow a liquid diet. A liquid diet includes milk, juice, water, sports drinks, tea, broth, strained soup, smoothies, milkshakes, and canned high-protein, high-calorie drinks. Clear liquids, such as water, apple juice, sports drinks, tea and broth contain minimal amounts of protein and fat. If you remain on a liquid diet for more than a few days, focus on liquids with more nutrition such as smoothies, milkshakes, cream-based soups and canned nutrition drinks.
Soft Diet
With your doctor's approval, you will be able to transition from a liquid diet to a soft diet. A soft diet includes foods that are easy to chew including pancakes, scrambled eggs, hot cereal, pudding, yogurt, bananas, applesauce, soup, macaroni and cheese, cottage cheese, mashed potatoes and ice cream. Avoid any foods that are rough, sharp or difficult to chew, such as chips, toast, crackers, most raw fruits and vegetables, popcorn and dry cereal. Not only could these foods be painful to eat, but they could also injure your surgical site.
Nausea
Pain medications prescribed after oral surgery can cause nausea. To help control nausea, do not take pain medications on an empty stomach. Drinking a glass of milk before taking pain medications can help prevent nausea and vomiting. Carbonated beverages can also help settle your stomach, but do so only if your surgeon has given you permission to drink carbonated beverages. If this does not help, contact your physician to discuss this side effect of your pain medication.
Precautions
It is important that that your diet does not disrupt your surgical site or interfere with healing. Following your surgery, drinking carbonated beverages, using a straw, smoking, spitting or brushing your teeth could interfere with normal blood clotting. Your surgeon can tell you when it will be safe for you to practice these activities again. When you are able to eat solid foods again, avoid foods that have small pieces that could get stuck in your surgical site including rice, popcorn, nuts, granola and small pieces of candy.
