Vaping After Tooth Extraction – How NOT To Screw It Up

So you got your tooth removed and you’re in pain… but you still can’t stop thinking about firing up your vape battery and taking a few puffs?

Here’s the deal…

Every good dentist or oral surgeon will tell you that vaping after an extraction is a bad move. It can seriously impede your recovery process. Not only that… It can cause a painful condition called dry socket (that requires even more dental surgery)…

Even I – a non-medical professional – will tell you that.

So I’ll repeat it here:

Your dentist will recommend NOT TO VAPE anywhere between 3-5 days after major dental surgery or tooth extractions (especially if we’re talking about a wisdom tooth.) You should heed their advice.

But…

I’ve been in your shoes. I had the same itch. And I’m talking from experience when I say that – sometimes – you just can’t help it.

Being smart about how you use your e-cigarette after an oral procedure will help, though.

So besides general patient centric advice about keeping your extraction wound clean — don’t get food into it, don’t get dirt into it, don’t touch the wound with your hands — just throw in: “don’t vape like you’ve just NOT had major oral surgery” and you should be fine and be able to put this painful experience behind you.

If you’ve had your wisdom tooth removed, here’s advice that I can give you firsthand, what with being a smoker and vaper for decades and having several major oral procedures in the meantime:

1. Do your best not to vape for 72 hours after the procedure [the longer, the better]
2. Ask your dentist to stitch up your wound [helpful with wisdom tooth extraction]
3. Cover the extraction site with a small sheet of gauze [wet it before applying]
4. Inhale with minimum force and away from the side of your wound

Let’s dig into how to put your oral health first if you’re a hardcore vaper.

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Our HighKey vaporizer is probably your safest bet after a tooth removal.

It’s low-suction, with little airflow, so it won’t cause havoc in your mouth.

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Why You Shouldn’t Use Your Pen After a Tooth Extraction

Regular tooth extraction — meaning your front teeth and not your molars or wisdom teeth — still leaves a gaping, sore wound in your mouth.

Every doctor will tell you that when you vape — or smoke — while that wound is still open and bleeding, you increase the risk of complications, slow down the healing process, and push back your recovery date.

How?

Well, while vaping on nic e-juices is undoubtedly way better than smoking cigarettes, it still introduces toxic chemicals and nicotine into your system. Some of these chemicals can slow down the healing process, as was proved in this research published by the Saudi Dental Journal. Nicotine, in particular, causes the blood flow to slow down, meaning that the extraction site and the gums around it aren’t getting the amount of oxygen needed to recover properly. 

So if you can, try to completely refrain from using electronic cigarettes in the first 72 hours after an uncomplicated extraction procedure. It will help you avoid inflammation and infection and cut your recovery down to days instead of weeks.

[Additionally, vaping is not your only concern here. You should also refrain from touching the extraction wound with your hands and make sure it’s not in contact with any food, so up your oral hygiene. You don’t want to expose it to bacteria and dirt that can cause further complications].

After a couple of days have passed, the extraction site should be closed. It’s now safe to vape, but still, make sure to avoid extreme suction as it might cause enough negative pressure to reopen the wound.

Now that we’ve covered your good, old regular teeth, let’s move on to a riskier proposition — vaping and wisdom teeth removal.

Why Dentists Don’t Recommend Vaping or Smoking After Procedures

Wisdom tooth extraction is very painful process for most people.

Why?

Because wisdom teeth — the last molars in your head — have huge roots that are embedded into your jaw. Once they’re pulled out, the gaping hole that’s left behind takes days, sometimes even weeks, to completely heal. The whole area is sore and painful for days, thanks to numerous sensitive nerve endings and blood vessels with high blood flow that surround the extraction site.

What makes vaping after removing a wisdom tooth particularly dangerous is that even the slightest sucking motion can result in you developing a dry socket — a painful condition that sets back your recovery.

What is a Dry Socket?

A wisdom tooth dry socket [alveolar osteitis] is a painful condition that occurs when a blood clot that forms inside a tooth extraction site dislodges. When that happens, the sensitive nerve endings and bone tissue are exposed, and there’s an increased risk of bacterial infection accompanied by intense pain.

If you’ve just had your wisdom tooth removed, here are the symptoms of a dry socket you need to watch for:

• intense pain when chewing and/or sucking a straw or a cigarette/vape
• severe pain that radiates from your jaw all the way up to your eye and ear
• you can’t fee a blood clot formed at the place of the extraction with your tongue
• intensified bleeding from the wound [even if several days have passed]
• bad breath and bad taste in your mouth [foul odor that’s extremely noticeable]
• you can see something white [this is the bone] poking out from out of the wound]

Since this blood clot that protects the wound is pretty fragile, you can see why using an e-cigarette — or even a straw — puts you at a higher risk of dry socket and risk of infection. And that can cause further damage while the wound is healing. A study published in the British Journal of Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery definitively ties a higher incidence of dry socket to the sucking motion that smokers and vapers do when smoking or vaping. By the way, all this applies to dry herb vapes and dabbing.

A good patient would completely avoid these actions.

But – if you insist on not being a good patient – here’s how you can minimize the risk (but you won’t get rid of it completely). Remember, this is what’s worked for me in the past so it’s based on personal experience and not sound medical advice.

How to (Relatively) Safely Puff After Extraction

So okay — your goal is to sneak in a few puffs of your e-cigarette before the dentist prescribed wait period has expired, right? 

Here’s a “vape after wisdom tooth removal” process and methods you should follow to get that risk down to a bare minimum:

• Wait AT LEAST 24 hours before vaping — before that, the blood clot is tiny, and even the slightest sucking action can dislodge it, preventing the wound healing fast enough.
• Vape with gauze over the wound — wet a piece of gauze and put it over the tooth extraction site, covering the soft tissue and the hole as best as you can.
• Take small, shallow inhales with your mouth partially open — you want to leave an area beside the drip tip open to avoid creating too much suction and negative pressure.
• Vape through your nose — it’s an option, that’s for sure. I’ve never heard anyone say anything good about it, though. It’s neither comfortable nor safe. And you’re still introducing chemicals to an open wound, even through you’re probably not risking a dry socket.

While not safe, this is a safer alternative and technique to vaping than the option of just going at it willy-nilly.  As I said, if you can definitely hold off for a longer period of time — the more you wait, the better your chances of not creating a dry socket with your vaping.

HighKey Vaporizer – Our Low-Suction Vape 

Our HighKey vaporizer is probably your safest bet after a tooth removal.

It’s low-suction, with little airflow, so it won’t cause havoc in your mouth.

Click Here to Get Your HighKey Today

A Bit of Patience Goes a Long Way

First thing first — yes, it’s possible to vape and not develop a dry socket.

But… vaping is a risk factor. And it definitely can increase your recovery time after tooth extraction or oral surgery.

So why not be a good little patient and just avoid it for a day or two? For the sake of your dental health?

If you feel like it’s going to be difficult to follow your oral surgeon’s advice here, a good idea would be to load up on nicotine patches. That way, you still get your nicotine fix, but you’re not risking an inflammation, an abscess, or worse. And while there are no dangers with vaping as with cigarette smoking, you still want to avoid it when there’s an open wound in your mouth.