From a young age, kids are taught about the importance of oral hygiene and encouraged to care for their teeth following the dentist’s guidance. That would include brushing to remove plaque from the surfaces to maintain enamel integrity and flossing to take care of the areas between the teeth where the brush is inefficient, plus mouth rinse to wash the loosened particles away.
Sometimes, parents need to help the little ones, but as kids grow, they take a bit more responsibility caring more about their appearance, including their smiles.
Unfortunately, as permanent teeth push through, misalignment, crowding, and other developmental issues lead to the need for pre-teens or teens to be fitted with braces to correct the problems before reaching adulthood when it is critical to look at the professional part for college or career pursuits.
But this hardware makes what we learn about hygiene obsolete because most of the tooth’s surface will now have a covering of metal material. How do you remove the debris now? Read this to learn about dental care with orthotics.
Do you now have an excuse to avoid cleaning your teeth since you cannot get to them, like if your arm is in a cast and is not washable? What will happen if you do not brush while you have braces? Let us look at how you should take care of hygiene while wearing your new hardware – and no, you cannot stop cleaning your mouth. You might need to work a little harder. Them’s the breaks when you want a beautiful smile.
How Do Teeth Stay Clean with Braces?
Braces are not just a teenage appliance. You can get these at any age, but a majority of those receiving the hardware are pre-teens or teens after developing their adult teeth, which come in poorly formed, misaligned, crooked, crowded, with a need for reshaping with the help of orthodontics.
The only issue with wearing these materials is most of the young and young at heart are unsure of how to care for their teeth while wearing the hardware compared to what they teach kids growing up before anything is blocking the surfaces of their teeth.
You obviously cannot avoid handling daily hygiene; in fact, it becomes a more involved process with braces, causing many people to feel challenged by the process. Learn steps for the process at https://www.wikihow.com/Clean-Teeth-With-Braces/. Some steps you can follow to keep your teeth in optimum condition include:
1. Follow A Plan of Action
In real-time, most people do not genuinely follow the rule of brushing their teeth after each meal daily. For the most part, dentists do not anticipate this either. However, when wearing braces, you do need to work a little bit harder to get the debris and plaque cleared away from under the hardware.
It is not as easy, and nobody will want to do it, but it’s critical if you’re going to come away with beautiful, healthy teeth. That means brushing and flossing on a grander scale and mouth rinses maybe more than once to get the loosened particles out away from the braces. The first step before you brush is to rinse with water. That will help get particles out that might be stuck in between the braces.
2. Take That Extra Time
The investment for the ideal set of braces to get the perfect set of teeth and the best smile, in the end, means you take the extra time to take care of each tooth. That will take brushing a little bit longer on specific areas to ensure you get each clean, with the total amount of time being approximately two minutes. Still, you can certainly go longer for the best clean.
When you take your time and work on each tooth separately, you can avoid staining and the standard white marks many find from wearing braces. It is a matter of working a little bit harder than you would when you don’t have the hardware to maneuver around.
Rather than avoid brushing altogether, as some people would believe, you have to take more time and add in a bit of extra care. That can relieve you of some of the additional particles jammed in around the hardware that might get missed when you initially take the first round of brushing and flossing.
3. Flossing Is Critical
Flossing is not only something that you need to do before an orthodontist fits you, but aftercare is much more critical. The toothbrush will have a difficult time getting in-between areas where floss maneuvers much easier and quicker. There are many different types of threading devices to make the process fast and straightforward. You do not have to stick with the traditional.
Getting in between the hardware is straightforward with floss, more so than with a toothbrush. You can get food stuck in the metal and get rid of plaque that you cannot touch with bristles. But the idea is to avoid certain substances so that you do not have to work quite so hard.
4. Stay Away from Specific Foods
Sugary and acidic substances can damage teeth without the hardware attached, stripping the enamel, and increasing the chance for cavities and decay. That produces heightened pain and increased sensitivity when you indulge in these foods, plus when you attempt to brush, depending on the bristles you try to use.
Whether an orthodontist has fitted you or not, you should seek a provider’s assistance when experiencing any of these symptoms to prevent the possibility of further damage to your teeth. It is also essential that you avoid these foods or enjoy them with a greater sense of moderation.
When you do have braces, you must listen to your dental provider about what foods you should and should not indulge in to protect your teeth. It will be more challenging to brush and keep them healthy with the orthodontics in place, meaning you need to be proactive with all other aspects of tooth health.
5. Gentle Is Priority
Even though the hardware is solid and sturdy, it is essential to use soft bristles and a gentle touch when brushing and flossing your teeth to preserve the enamel and prevent loosening any hardware.
It would be best to use gentle pressure and not push too hard against the brace surfaces to keep the brackets intact. It is also wise to only brush when necessary to prevent too much activity with the hardware. It is critical that these pieces not become loose, so they do their job in moving the teeth and giving you a smile, you hope for. To do that, you have to take good care of not just your teeth but the brackets too.
6. Remember To Take Care Of Your Tongue
Your breath will stay fresh if you remember to brush your tongue. Sometimes with braces, it can be challenging to maintain a fresh mouth. No one wants to endure an unpleasant odor in their mouth throughout the day. Removing the bacteria from the tongue that sits and festers helps to decrease foul odors.
Taking care of the germs on the tongue keeps it from hiding behind the metal where it’s so challenging to reach with the bristles of a toothbrush or a piece of floss. There are tongue scrapers and other utensils to keep the tongue germ-free. It might be an extra step, but definitely worth the effort when it comes to oral hygiene.
7. Pay Attention But Don’t Go Overboard
A dentist and orthodontist will work with patients on ways to keep teeth clean with and without braces. It’s essential to pay attention to the effort you need to take and understand that you also don’t need to go overboard. That can put your hardware at risk.
You don’t want to loosen the brackets. While you want to keep your teeth the cleanest they can be, remove plaque, and keep stains away; the goal is to improve the distortion that created the need to wear the brackets in the first place. That means maintaining the orthodontics in the best possible care also.
Pay attention to what the provider tells you, and don’t go too far. Use general common-sense so your teeth stay healthy and you get the most significant benefit from your time with the equipment.
Final Thought
The dentist gives us one set of instructions for brushing and flossing, which most of us attempt to follow diligently to maintain the best oral hygiene possible. When nature throws a monkey wrench in the works creating a need for orthodontic care and the addition of metal braces to improve developmental problems, some of us are not quite sure how to take care of the metal plus each tooth under there.
The critical thing to remember is the dentist, and the orthodontist will give their guidelines as they do before we need these assistive devices. All that’s required is to follow their guidance to learn how to get whiter teeth with braces, plus know not to go too far as to create a hazard with the metal so that the braces aren’t effective.
You might have to work a little harder to rid your mouth of plaque and bacteria, but as a rule, your goal is to get the optimum result for your smile and the health of your mouth.
