If you wear braces, it’s important to include braces care in your everyday life. If you maintain your braces carefully, you’ll be ensuring effective oral hygiene and treatment success. Taking care of your mouth can be a little more difficult when you have braces, but following some common-sense tips can make it easier to get into a daily braces routine. Paying special attention to your oral health can help you avoid problems like demineralization, sensitivity, bad breath, and gum disease. The routine blow tips that can make it easier to care for your dental work as you look forward to achieving a more beautiful smile.
Adopt a Morning Routine
Everyone who wears braces should start their morning by brushing and flossing. Here’s how to do it:
Step 1: Brushing with Braces
When you have braces, you’ll need to gently and thoroughly brush your teeth every morning. Dab a fluoride toothpaste onto a soft-bristled brush, then point the bristles down or up towards your gums at a 45-degree angle. Brush each tooth using gentle, circular strokes, and be sure that the bristles are cleaning under the wires and around your brackets. It should take at least two minutes. To clean your whole mouth. You can also use a mirror and adjust your brushing angle to clean hard-to-reach spots.
Step 2: Flossing with Braces
Flossing can be tricky when your mouth is filled with orthodontics, but tools like floss threaders and water flossers can make things easier. A floss threader is a flexible plastic tool that has a loop on one end.
To use a floss threader, you should pair the tool with about half a yard of floss and follow these steps:
- Feed the end of the floss threader between your teeth and the arch wire of your braces and pull it to position the loop beneath the wire.
- Thread a few inches of floss through the arch of the loop, then gently pull the threader so that the floss is behind the arch wire.
- Remove the floss threader, then grasp the floss to create a 3-inch section.
- Hold the floss section tight against your teeth and slide it up and down to remove plaque.
- Carefully remove the floss without tugging on the wires or brackets of your braces.
- Repeat until you have completely flossed all of your teeth.
You can also use a water flosser to thoroughly clean around your teeth and braces. This tool sprays a pressurized stream of water against your teeth to remove debris and plaque that rest between your teeth, around your braces, and along your gum line. Water flossing is not a substitute for manual brushing and flossing, but it can help you achieve a deeper clean.
Manage Your Eating Habits
While you’re wearing braces, it’s important to watch what you eat. This can feel tiresome at times, but the results are worth it.
Step 3: Adjust Your Diet for Braces
It’s important to eat carefully when you have braces. Some foods can stick to, stain, or damage their wires and brackets. When you’re eating with braces, you’ll want to avoid:
Hard or Chewy Produce
Fresh fruits and vegetables are healthy, but they may not mix well with braces. Biting into hard or stringy raw produce like apples, carrots, and corn on the cob can bend or break your wires. If you must eat fresh corn, use a knife to cut kernels from the cob before you dish up your food.
Sticky Foods
Sticky foods, like caramels, toffee, gum, gummy candy, taffy, and hard candy, can stick to dental work and lead to tooth decay.
Chewy or Dense Breads
Though it’s okay to eat some soft breads, like tortillas, sandwich bread, and soft breadsticks, when you have braces, chewy, thick, and dense breads like bagels, hard rolls, and pizza crust can put stress on your dental work. Chewing these breads can cause your brackets to loosen, encourage buildup, and possibly hurt your mouth.
Tough Meats and Jerky
Tough and stringy meats like pork chops, bone-in chicken wings, steak, and meat jerky can be hard on braces. Soft, slow-roasted, and ground meats can be eaten with care.
Hard, Crunchy Snacks
Crunchy foods like hard pretzels, crackers, kettle chips, crispy cookies, and hard taco shells can damage braces or break into small pieces that can get caught between your teeth.
Nuts and Seeds
Nuts, small and large seeds, popcorn, and foods like granola bars can be hard to chew, get stuck in your dental work, and lodge between your teeth.
Sugary Foods
Most people know that sugary foods can harm teeth, and if you have braces, they can wreak havoc. Sodas, sweetened coffee and tea, candy, chocolate, jams, pies, and baked goods can create a sticky film in your mouth that can damage your brackets and encourage tooth decay, so it’s best to avoid them.
Pigmented and Acidic Foods
Acidic foods like spaghetti sauce and highly pigmented foods like coffee, tea, and dark juices may stain some braces if you eat or drink them frequently. It’s fine to have these foods occasionally; just make sure to rinse your mouth and clean your teeth right after eating.
Braces-Friendly Foods
If you’re looking for braces-safe snacks or foods to keep you satisfied, stick to soft, delicate, and easy-to-chew foods that will leave your teeth easier to clean. The foods listed below can be great to eat when you have dental work:
- tofu or veggie burgers
- soft rolls, muffins, and pancakes
- yogurt, pudding, and soft ice cream
- applesauce, bananas, peaches, melon, and grapes or other mashed, seedless fruit
- soft, cooked carrots, sweet potatoes, or other vegetables
- eggplant dip, bean dip, and hummus
- lunch meats, meatloaf, and hamburger
- hard- or soft-boiled, scrambled, or poached eggs
- crab cakes, salmon, tuna, and shrimp
- frozen yogurt, shakes, and smoothies
- soft pasta dishes with mild sauces
Step 4: Practical Tips for Dining Out
When you’re eating out with friends or family, it’s natural to want to try new foods, but you should still use caution. Soups, soft-cooked stews, and pasta and seafood dishes are usually dental work-friendly options. Read the menu carefully, ask your server for recommendations, and watch out for bones when you eat.
Daytime Braces Maintenance
Braces require constant maintenance, even when you’re away from home, so you’ll need to prepare to take care of your mouth wherever you happen to be.
Step 5: Portable Braces Care Kit
It’s surprising how much having braces can change your life in small ways. To make your life as hassle-free as possible, you should prepare for any small needs and mishaps that might come up when you’re out of the house. Filling a portable orthodontic care kit with a few necessary supplies can help you take care of your braces anywhere, so be sure to pack the following items:
Water Bottle
Drinking fresh water can help keep your mouth hydrated, rinse away debris, acids, and bacteria, and increase your saliva production.
Toothbrush, Toothpaste, and Flossers
If you have metal braces, you need to clean your teeth after you eat to keep bacteria levels down and prevent bad breath. Keep a travel-sized toothbrush, fluoride toothpaste, and floss picks on hand to freshen your mouth at any time.
Pocket Mirror
Carrying a pocket mirror is an easy way to check your braces for stuck remnants of food.
Extra Elastics
If you’re using elastics on your braces, it’s common to break or lose one from time to time, so keep some spares on hand.
Orthodontic Wax
If your braces rub against the inside of your lips or cheeks, putting orthodontic wax on the wires or brackets can help prevent and relieve irritation.
Over-the-Counter Painkillers
Managing braces discomfort is easier when you use medicine occasionally. to treat your symptoms. If your mouth gets sore after an adjustment, taking a dose of over-the-counter pain medication as directed can help you feel better.
Step 6: Handling Braces Emergencies
No one who wears braces wants to experience a popped wire or loose bracket, but it’s good to prepare for the worst. If either of these emergencies happens, call your orthodontist to check in. This way, you can discuss whether you’ll need to come to their office for help. Sometimes you can temporarily fix the problem yourself using the following methods:
Loose Brackets
If a bracket feels loose on your teeth, try pressing a small piece of orthodontic wax over or between the bracket and the tooth to hold it in place.
Poking Wires
Occasionally, you may have an arch wire poke out of a bracket as your teeth shift. To keep the wire from irritating your mouth, try covering the end with a small piece of orthodontic wax or sugar-free gum.
Nighttime Braces Care
Although you’ll be caring for your teeth throughout the day, a good bedtime cleaning will help keep your mouth fresh through the night.
Step 7: Nightly Deep Clean
We can’t say it enough: When you have braces, keeping your teeth clean is the key to great oral health. Many orthodontists recommend brushing your teeth at least four times a day and deep-cleaning your teeth before you go to bed. Before you brush and floss, use an interdental toothbrush to gently clean your braces and the spaces between your teeth. Next, rinse your mouth with an antibacterial mouthwash for one minute to reduce inflammation, prevent infection, and decrease the chance of getting gum disease.
Step 8: Caring for Orthodontic Appliances
If you are using a retainer or another removable orthodontic appliance to align your teeth, it’s important to clean and store it properly when it’s not in your mouth. You can brush your retainer every time you brush and floss your teeth to remove debris and plaque. It’s also a good idea to soak the appliance in a denture-cleaning solution once a day.
Maintaining Your Braces Will Give You a Beautiful Smile!
When you care for your braces consistently, you’ll be sure to reap the benefits. Engaging in proper dental care for braces ensures you’ll have better oral health and evenly spaced teeth once the braces come off. Maintaining your dental work can help to prevent complications, reduce the chance of pain, and even shorten your treatment time! Be sure to visit your orthodontist for your scheduled check-ups, and before long, you’ll be proud to show off a smile you love.
We hope you’ve learned a few things from our guide to protecting and cleaning braces. These terms focus on the comprehensive care and maintenance necessary for individuals wearing braces.