Improve Your Smile Through Careful Practice — Maintaining Your Braces
Posted on: 8 June 2017
Going through life with damage to your smile can be a real challenge to your self confidence. Many people think about braces and orthodontic treatments in the context of children and adolescents, but as an adult, they can still have a huge impact on your day to day life. In order to maximize that impact, you need to make sure you take good care of them.
Below, you'll find a guide to some steps for maintaining your braces during orthodontic treatment. Following these suggestions can help you get the assistance you need on a time frame you're happy with and can help make sure that your investment doesn't go to waste.
Careful Eating
The bonding technology that holds your braces to your teeth is strong enough to hold on through most daily usage, but you might run into some problems if you make poor dietary decisions. Some foods can weaken those bonds or even cause them to break entirely, and a broken bracket will decrease the efficacy of your braces until your next appointment can re-secure it.
Extremely firm and crunchy foods should be avoided. Sticky foods might also cling to your teeth and pull at your hardware. Overall, any opportunity you have to cut food into bite size pieces rather than biting directly in is one you should probably take.
Thorough Cleaning
Working on the alignment and spacing of your teeth might be for naught if you allow them to undergo decay during your orthodontic treatment. Cleaning in all of the crevasses in your mouth is a difficult challenge even under easy circumstances, but given the new trouble spots created by your braces, you need to be hyper vigilant.
It's crucial that you commit to thorough brushing after every meal to remove any food particles which may be caught up in your appliances. You should also use specialized tools designed for cleaning around your brackets and wires to guarantee you can scrub out any stubborn remnants.
Following Instructions
When delays occur that require your braces to be worn for longer than you planned, they're unfortunately almost always due to user error. It can be difficult to keep up with tasks like wearing rubber bands on a regular basis, and the discomfort from headgear or night guards may leave you frustrated. Ultimately, that frustration will only compound if you don't follow those suggestions, so it's essential that you cling diligently to all of the tasks that your dentist or orthodontist places in front of you.
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