General Tips for Nutrition, Eating, and Mouth Care

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Nutrition
It's difficult to meet your daily nutritional needs with your jaw wired shut. Most lose weight. Thankfully, it's easy to make sure you don't suffer nutritionally.

Vitamin Supplements
Below is a list of supplements that are easy to find and pack in plenty of what you'll need. Try to find the one that you like the most with the most calories to keep you energized. I put these first because they're very easy to incorporate into your daily routine. Consume up to three each day, according to the guidance of your doctor or nutritionist.

1. Ready-Made Drinks. There are plenty of meal replacers out there that come ready-to-go servings with many flavors.  Examples include Ensure, Carnation Instant Breakfast, Boost, EAS drinks, Muscle Milk, and Slim Fast. The links go to the best nutrition information I could find for each product.
2. Powder Mixes.You can buy almost all of the above in powder form and mix them with water, milk, or into a smoothie. You may prefer this because it increases the variety of things you can drink and still get large amounts of vitamins and calories.
3. Ordinary (Multi-)Vitamins. Simply crush chewable vitamins and mix them with any liquid. Stores also sell liquid vitamins. Be careful when mixing any crushed pill with large amounts of mixers; if the flavor isn't totally masked, you will be stuck drinking 12 oz. of something awful instead of just 2-3 oz.
   

Balanced Diet
You'll be surprised at how diversely you can eat even when you depend on a blender. Remember, all it's doing is chewing for you. See the recipes section for more.


Actually Eating
I thought once I blended something, the hard part was over. Not always.

Things You Didn't Know Existed Will Be Stuck in Your Wires and Teeth. Tiny seeds, spice fragments, sometimes the skins of vegetables like beans, strands of meat; almost anything will clog you up even though it was invisible in the blender and passed easily through your straw. To deal with this:

1. Always Have Water Handy for Swishing. A small sip and a quick swish will clear the blockage right out, and you can continue to eat the rest of what you've prepared.
2. Always Have a Tissue Handy. Some of what you swish will go behind your teeth. Some will not, and you'll have to spit it out. I noticed this especially with seeds and stubborn pieces of meat. You may want to consider what you eat in public ahead of time.
3. In Case of Emergency, Blow Real Hard. While riding in a car I discovered that you can clear a lot of junk out of your teeth just by parting your lips as much as you can and blowing as hard as possible out through your teeth. It's not socially acceptable, but it's very, very effective!
   

Mouth Care
Rinse thoroughly with water (or mouthwash) after each meal.