Life with
We promise, life with braces won’t be too much of a change. Follow these tips to breeze right through treatment.
Eating With Braces
The first few days of braces treatment, your teeth can be a little sensitive to biting pressure. It’s best to stick with soft foods like smoothies, scrambled eggs, yogurt and applesauce until the tenderness subsides.
Otherwise, aside from a few exceptions, you can still eat most of your favorites while you have braces. Just be sure to break or cut food into bitesize pieces and chew with your back teeth.
Foods to Avoid With Braces
- Hard foods – hard candy, nuts, hard rolls, ice
- Chewy foods – licorice, beef jerky, chewy bagels
- Crunchy foods – popcorn, chips, large pieces of raw vegetables
- Sticky foods – caramel, taffy, gummy candy
- Food you have to bite directly into – meat on the bone (off the bone is fine!), corn on the cob (take it off the cob), whole apples
Playing Sports With Braces
You can absolutely still play sports when you have braces. To keep your appliance, teeth and mouth safe, however, you should wear a mouthguard when doing any kind of physical activity where there’s a possibility of getting hit in the face. Let us know you’re an athlete, and we can create a custom mouthguard for you.
Oral Hygiene With Braces
Your braces can trap food and plaque, so it’s important to maintain excellent oral hygiene. You’ll also want to continue seeing your general dentist every six months for a cleaning and exam during your treatment.
Brushing With Braces
- Brush your teeth for two minutes in the morning, after meals and snacks, and before bed with a soft-bristled manual or electric toothbrush and fluoride toothpaste.
- Brush the front of your teeth using small, circular motions. Be sure to pay extra attention to the areas around your brackets and between your brackets and gumline, where food tends to get trapped.
- Brush the chewing and inside surfaces of your teeth using gentle, short, back-and-forth motions.
- If you feel like you still have food and/or plaque around your brackets after brushing, add an interproximal brush, also called an interdental brush, to your routine. The small brush is perfect for getting into tight spaces.
- Bring a braces kit with a travel toothbrush and toothpaste in it whenever you’re on the go. If you forget it at home, rinse your mouth out really well with water after eating, and brush your teeth when you can.
Flossing With Braces
- Floss at least once daily using waxed dental floss and a floss threader or a special tool like SuperFloss™ or Platypus® orthodontic flossers.
- Guide the pointed tip of your floss threader or the stiff end of your SuperFloss behind your braces wire.
- Position the floss between any two teeth and wrap the ends around your index fingers. Pull a few inches of floss tight between them.
- Slide the floss up and down the side of one tooth, reaching under the gumline. Slide the floss up and down the side of the neighboring tooth, again, getting under the gumline.
- Repeat the process until you’ve flossed all of your teeth, including around those back molars.
For even more cleaning power, you can also use a water flosser once a day. It won’t replace regular flossing, but it is a worthwhile extra step.
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