How to Maintain Your Braces
Braces can make oral care difficult, but that doesn’t mean you should ignore it. In many ways, they make maintaining proper oral hygiene even more important. If you want to have a beautiful smile once your teeth are properly straightened and aligned. You will need to take the necessary measures to maintain your teeth and braces.
Proper brace maintenance should be discussed with your orthodontist. However, this guide can give you a quick, go-to resource for understanding the needs of your brace and your teeth.
While each brace is doing its job to put your teeth into the proper alignment, they can also make it difficult to follow an oral hygiene routine. As the brace has more hooks, curves, and corners than our teeth, food particles can get trapped more easily.
To properly maintain your braces, here are a few cleaning habits you should adopt:
Clean Often:
• Clean Often: You may be used to hearing that you should brush twice a day. During the tooth-straightening procedure, you may find that you need to brush more often. Because the food can become trapped more easily, you are at a higher risk of growing harmful bacteria. To be safe, you should try to brush after every time you eat. This can dislodge any food that has become trapped in a brace or wire. If you don’t have a toothbrush available, try rinsing with water.
Use The Right Brush:
• Use The Right Brush: You may think that a hard bristle toothbrush is best for cleaning but it can actually be damaging. Additionally, the stiffness of the brush bristles can make it difficult to really get under the wire or shape around the brace. Instead, choose a soft bristle brush that can form around each brace and move between the wires. You should be able to feel the bristles between your wires.
Floss:
• Floss: Flossing is important for everyone, but your wires can make it a little more difficult to properly floss. However, you shouldn’t stop flossing just because it is a little more difficult. In many ways, flossing is even more important because of how easily food can get trapped. If you’re really struggling to floss, talk to your orthodontist about special accessories that can make it easier. Floss threaders allow you to easily get between the wires or you can even use special floss that has a thicker end.
Use Mouthwash:
• Use Mouthwash: Mouthwash is recommended when trying to maintain oral hygiene. It can help deliver a punch of antibacterial power to your teeth and gums. Because it is so easy for food to be trapped in your teeth, mouthwash can help rinse that food away and kill any bacteria it may have caused. Mouthwash can also help relieve irritation and reduce swelling that can be caused by a brace or wire rubbing on your mouth or gums. Antibacterial properties can keep cuts or sores clean so that they can heal quickly and properly.
Avoid Certain Foods:
• Avoid Certain Foods: Cleaning our teeth properly isn’t the only thing we should do to keep each brace strong and intact. There are also some foods that you will want to avoid to ensure you have a beautiful smile when all the metal comes off. Foods to avoid include anything sweet or sugary, such as sodas or candies. Because the sugar has a better chance of getting stuck in your teeth, there is also a bigger chance that you will experience tooth decay. Sticky foods, like gum or caramel, should also be avoided because they can pull a brace from your tooth. Hard foods, like nuts or popcorn, can break your wires.
Eat Low Acidity Foods:
• Eat Low Acidity Foods: If you’re wondering what you can eat that won’t damage your brackets or wires, focus on foods with low acidity levels. These will not cause damage to your tooth enamel. Low acidity foods include eggs, milk, bananas and seafood. Vegetables, potatoes, and yogurt are also low acidity so they can be incorporated into your diet as much as you would like.
The Importance of Brace Maintenance
As you probably already know, undergoing a treatment to straighten your teeth can be expensive. But if you take proper care of your teeth, the beautiful smile you’ll have after you’re done will be well worth the money. However, if you don’t take care of your brackets and wires, you won’t get the smile you’re after. Or it will take longer to see your best results.
Don’t compromise a beautiful smile just because you’re feeling lazy. Ignoring your brushing or flossing for just one night allows tooth-damaging bacteria to grow. This can leave you with tooth decay or gum disease. While proper maintenance and oral hygiene can take a few minutes to complete, having a healthy smile that you can’t wait to show off will be worth it.
Discuss
Be sure to discuss the unique needs of your mouth, brackets, wires, and teeth. Because each individual is different and will have different components of their procedure, you may need to take additional steps to ensure they are properly maintained. Have your orthodontist walk you through the various steps of a proper cleaning and what else you should be doing at home to maintain your smile.
If you have questions about brackets, wires, or other teeth straightening procedures, contact the expert dental team at BeachBraces. As leaders in the orthodontics industry, we have helped individuals of all ages and will all different needs get the smile they have always dreamed of. If you’re ready to make an appointment and begin discussing what your orthodontic options are, you can contact our Manhattan Beach office at 310-379-0006.
Beach Braces Orthodontics
220 N. Aviation Blvd
Suite A
Manhattan Beach
CA 90266
Phone: (310) 379-0006
Skype: Beachbraces
https://www.beachbraces.org/
.How to Maintain Your Braces
Dr Patti Panucci attended the University of Louisville School of Dentistry for four years, where she graduated with a DMD degree (May 2000) among the Top 10 in her class. Following that, she headed west to Los Angeles to complete her three-year residency at one of the top-ranked orthodontic programs in the country – the University of Southern California.
Along with her certificate in orthodontics, Dr. Panucci earned a master’s degree in craniofacial biology. During those three years, she fell in love with Southern California beach life and decided that this was where her future lay.
