You’ve found an orthodontist, gotten your braces, and are on your way to a straighter smile. But did you know your daily habits play a significant role in their success and your treatment timeline?
Certain common mistakes can lead to discomfort, damage to your braces, and even delays. By understanding these potential pitfalls, you can take simple steps to avoid them.
Eating the Wrong Foods
One of the most common causes of problems during orthodontic treatment is eating foods that can damage your braces. Hard, sticky, and chewy foods can bend wires, break brackets, and loosen bands. A broken wire or bracket is not just an inconvenience. It can also set back your treatment timeline and require an extra visit to our office for a repair.
Keep in mind that this dietary adjustment is temporary. Avoiding certain foods is a short-term sacrifice for a long-term, healthy smile.
Foods to Avoid
- Hard Foods: Things like nuts, hard candies, ice, and popcorn can easily break a bracket off a tooth.
- Sticky Foods: Caramel, taffy, and gummy candies can get caught in your wires and pull on your brackets.
- Chewy Foods: Crusty breads, bagels, and tough meats can bend wires and loosen your appliances.
- Foods You Bite Into: Biting directly into foods like whole apples, corn on the cob, or carrots can put too much pressure on your front brackets.
By steering clear of these items, you significantly reduce the risk of damaging your braces and needing an emergency appointment.
Not Cutting Food into Smaller Pieces
As we just mentioned, many foods can be problematic. But this does not have to mean you need to give them up entirely. Instead, you just need to change how you eat them.
Cutting your food into small, bite-sized pieces is a simple but effective way to protect your braces. By cutting up apples, carrots, and other firm foods, you can place them directly onto your back teeth for chewing. This bypasses the front brackets, where damage is most likely to occur. The same principle applies to other foods, like sandwiches or pizza crust.
Brushing Ineffectively
Many patients brush too quickly or miss important areas. Unfortunately, lazy brushing is not enough when you have braces. You need to be methodical to clean around each bracket and along the gumline for at least two minutes.
To brush effectively, angle your toothbrush at 45 degrees to clean around the brackets. Brush from the top and then from the bottom of each bracket to ensure you remove all plaque and food debris. It is also important to pay close attention to the gumline, as with or without braces, plaque can accumulate there.
Skipping Floss
Flossing with braces can seem complicated and time-consuming, which leads many patients to skip it altogether. However, flossing is more important than ever during orthodontic treatment. Brushing alone cannot reach the spaces between your teeth or underneath the wire.
Plaque that is not removed from these areas can cause cavities between your teeth and lead to gum inflammation. To make flossing easier, you can use tools specifically designed for braces.
- Floss Threaders: These are flexible plastic loops that help you guide the floss underneath your wire.
- Water Flossers: These devices use a stream of pressurized water to flush out food particles and plaque from between teeth and around brackets.
Missing or Rescheduling Appointments
Your regular adjustment appointments are when we make the precise changes needed to guide your teeth into their correct positions. During these visits, we monitor your progress, tighten or change your wires, and ensure everything is moving as it should.
When you miss an appointment or reschedule it for a later date, you can be inadvertently pausing your treatment. These delays can add weeks or even months to your total time in braces. We understand that life can be busy, so if you must reschedule, please contact our office as soon as possible so we can find the next available time.
If it’s time for your next appointment, call now! And, as always, if you ever have questions about your care, do not hesitate to ask our team.
