Wearing braces won’t have too much of an impact on your day-to-day life. With a few small changes to your oral hygiene and eating habits and some tips for troubleshooting common issues, you’ll breeze right through treatment.
Oral Hygiene
When you’re wearing braces, oral hygiene is more important than ever because it’s easy for food and bacteria to get trapped between your brackets and wires, which leads to plaque buildup and possibly cavities.
- We recommend using an electric toothbrush. Be sure to brush your teeth in the morning, before bed and after every meal or snack with non-whitening, fluoride toothpaste.
- Floss at least once a day using an orthodontic flosser or product like Super Floss.
- Introducing a proxy brush into your routine is a great idea too as it can get into the nooks and crannies and under your wires to more effectively keep your braces clean.
- Continue to visit your regular dentist for checkups and cleanings to make sure your teeth and gums are healthy.
Brushing Techniques with Braces
Brushing with Proxabrush
Flossing with superfloss
Foods to Avoid With Braces
Unfortunately, some foods have the potential to damage or even break your braces. These problems can cause delays in treatment and prevent you from getting your braces off on time. However, temporarily giving up a few treats will seem well worth it when you see your new smile. You can still eat most of the things you love but there are some exceptions, so remember to avoid these foods:
- THE PIZZA CRUST is the best part and the place where bent wires start!
- HARD ROLLS, PRETZELS, BAGELS AND BONES knock off brackets and wires, so leave them alone.
- DORITOS, TACOS and all the rest will form a hard ball and make your braces a mess!
- POPCORN and movies are fun for all but the pain popcorn causes is no fun at all.
- NUTS are always very good too but we’ll have to say, no nuts for you!
- SLIM JIMS are fun to eat but for breaking your braces, they’re hard to beat.
- RIBS AND MEATS that are on the bone are the kind of foods you should leave alone.
- RAW CARROTS and rabbits go together well but the damage they cause is easy to tell.
- CARAMEL, CANDY, JU-JU BEANS AND GUM pull off your brackets and feed bacteria, so my friend, don’t let them near ya.
- ICE is nice in the heat we all know, but it destroys your braces, so a thousand times no!
Foods to Avoid with Braces
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