Brushing with Braces
For Our Patients
Your personal home care plays an important role in achieving a beautiful healthy smile that will last you a life time. Try to…
- Brush your teeth after each time you eat and therefore avoid a build-up of plaque or bacteria on your teeth.
- Reduce the number of snacks between your meals, so that you need to spend less time brushing and flossing using the various dental aids that we give you when the braces are fitted.
- We have summarised below the tooth brushing instructions that we also gave to you the day you got your braces fitted:
- Place your toothbrush above the wire in the case of the upper teeth (or, in the case of lower teeth, below the wire at a 45 degree angle towards your gums) and gently brush from gum to tooth, ensuring that you can feel the bristles removing any food between the wire and the junction where your teeth and gums meet. This is the area most crucial to focus on as this is the area where most bacteria and food particles will lodge.
- Then move your brush towards the biting surface of the teeth and angle it upwards in a 45 degree angle towards the wire and this will remove anything caught between the biting surface and the wire.
- Brush the inner surfaces of your teeth and lastly the biting surfaces.
- Finally, brush your tongue and use your fluoride mouth rinse to freshen the areas between your teeth that you cannot reach with your toothbrush.
….which brings us to flossing !
Daily flossing is very effective to clean in between your teeth and just under the gumline. Whether or not you have braces, flossing greatly prevents the build-up of plaque, which, if left alone can cause severe damage to the gums, teeth and bone levels. You can use a floss threader and thread the floss through the end:
- Place the floss threader under the wire between the teeth and thread the floss through the loop.
- Pull the threader through the contact between the teeth whilst holding the floss. Once the floss comes through to the other side of the tooth, grab the floss so you are now holding it on each side of the tooth and gently slide the floss up and down in a C shape, so that you are ‘hugging the tooth’ both on the left and right of the contacting tooth surfaces.
- Alternatively you can use superfloss, which is coated at one end to facilitate poking it through between the teeth at the gum margin.
- If you are caught out between meals and are not in a position to give your teeth the normal care, please rinse your mouth out with water or have a small pocket sized fluoride mouth rinse in your bag.
Link to Typical Orthodontic Problems
Link to Explanation of the Parts of a Metal Brace
View over the benefits of Orthodontic Treatment
Click here to view our Orthodontic FAQS
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