Life with braces!

Here are a few guidelines to follow:

Caring For Your Braces

While not considered orthodontic emergencies, these are some of the common problems that people can experience during treatment.

Watch what you eat

Braces require that you stay away from certain foods to avoid possible damage to or “gumming up” of the brackets and arch wires.  For this reason, we suggest you stay away from crunchy, hard or chewy foods.

Be thorough with your hygiene

While you should always be maintaining your oral hygiene any way, with braces, special attention must be paid to ensuring you brush properly and thoroughly.  Always use your flossing threaders to help you ensure all the spaces between the teeth and the aparatus are free of food rests.  One of our hygienists will demonstrate this to you at your visit.

Don’t worry if you are sore

An unforunate initial side effect of getting braces, is that you may experience some soreness as you adjust to braces and archwires.  Gums may become sore and in extreme cases you may even experience some bleeding, but this will pass quite quickly as your mouth adjusts to having braces in place.  A warm water and salt water rinse can help alleviate this.  Also, if you ever experience a wire poking you, we will have provided you with a special wax which you can apply to stop this from occuring.

Brace brackets that break

Sometimes brackets can become loose during treatment. It usually won’t hurt but may feel a little different than normal. Give the office a call to let us know so we can determine a time to see you. There is usually no immediate rush to fix a broken bracket.

Looseness of appliances

It is possible for fixed appliances to become loose over time. Sometimes expanders or other glued-in appliances can become loose or even fall out. DO NOT re-insert them. Rather, call our office so that our team can instruct you on what to do.

 

Looseness of Teeth

This is normal and no cause for alarm. A very small looseness of the teeth may occur during your life with braces. In order for the teeth to be re-aligned over time, they in fact have to loosen first! Once they have settled in their final positions through treatment, they will once again become more rigid an fixed in place.