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Clean Your Braces
Getting that beautiful smile with straight white teeth can take time and effort, especially when orthodontic help is needed. Sometimes teeth need a little rearranging and orthodontic braces are the perfect remedy. But wearing braces means taking extra care of your teeth, because brushing your teeth is much more difficult. Food that gets stuck in braces may be nourishment for the wrong kind of bacteria, the kind that creates acids that may eat away at tooth enamel and cause tooth decay. So teeth with braces need to be cleaned really well to avoid damage to the tooth surface.
Manual Toothbrush
The classic manual toothbrush is painfully slow and takes a lot of effort to get into all the nooks and crannies. Special orthodontic toothbrushes make cleaning a little easier with their smaller heads and longer bristles. But it still takes longer to brush teeth with braces.
Electric Toothbrush
The thought immediately comes to mind “I should use an electric toothbrush”, but you should choose your brush carefully. Most electric toothbrushes were designed with gum protection and stimulation in mind and the oscillating or rotating brushes usually do a great job of cleaning teeth and gently massaging gums. But brushing a tooth surface with braces presents some totally different challenges. The wires and other structures obstruct the tooth surface and create tiny nooks and crannies that a brush needs to penetrate into. Rotating or oscillating brushes may just brush over the top of braces without getting in to the nooks and crannies. And if you push down harder to get a better cleaning effect you wear out the brush heads in record time.
Additionally, when brushing takes longer and you have to push down harder to get results, you also risk damaging the gums. Bleeding gums after brushing is a frequent problem with braces.
Vibrating Electric Toothbrush
A better solution may be a vibrating toothbrush, where the bristles vibrate their way into the tight spaces of teeth with braces, dislodging food particles and removing the dental plaque that forms continuously on teeth. Depending on the type of brush, the vibrations may be accompanied by sonic or ultrasonic waves that support the cleaning effect and may also help to clean between the teeth. And studies have shown that sonic vibrating brushes may actually help to clean between the teeth, a big problem for braces since flossing is very difficult or impossible with braces on the teeth.
Waterjets
There are a variety of devices available that use a water spray or jet to help clean braces. These devices consist of a pump system that sprays a fine stream of water which can be directed towards braces and between teeth. This is actually a great way to dislodge and remove any deposits in the braces and on teeth quickly and efficiently.
Using a vibrating toothbrush in parallel ensures that the sticky dental plaque is removed from all surfaces.
It does take a little more effort to keep teeth with braces clean but the beautiful straight teeth that are the result are certainly worth it!
