Taking Care of Your Teeth
Caring for your braces is pretty easy if you follow a few
guidelines.
Brushing: The first thing to consider when cleaning your
teeth is that there are three surfaces of each tooth that
need to be brushed. These surfaces are:
� The Outside
� The Inside
� The Chewing Side
The Outside: When brushing the
outside of your teeth you should try to make a 45 degree
angle toward the gum line between the head of your
toothbrush and the tooth itself.
It is especially important to make sure the area between
the brace and the gum stays clean.
Try to focus on a few teeth at a time. Make sure these
teeth are completely free of food and plaque before moving
to the next few. Once you're done with the outsides of the
top and bottom teeth you can move to the insides.
The Inside: When brushing the inside surfaces of
your teeth try to maintain the 45 degree angle towards the
gum line as you did with the outside surfaces. Again, focus
on just a few teeth at a time and make sure that they are
clean before moving on.
The Chewing Side: Cleaning the chewing sides of the teeth
should be straight forward. Remember to focus on a few teeth
at a time prior to moving on to the next ones.
Flossing: Flossing with braces takes a few minutes
to master, but the effort is well worth it. The best type of
floss to use with braces is called Superfloss. The people at
Oral-B make it and it can be found in the dental aisle of
most supermarkets and drug stores. The nice thing about
Superfloss is that one end is stiff so threading it under
the braces is easy. The other end is fuzzy and really helps
to get around all surfaces of the braces.
The first step to flossing is getting the floss under the
wire that connects the braces together.
Once the floss is under the archwire it can be wrapped
around the tooth on one side. The floss is then pushed up
toward the gum line and then pulled down toward the wire.
This should be repeated four to five times to ensure all
plaque is removed. Be careful not to put too much pressure
on the wire as you pull down. Then wrap the floss around the
neighboring tooth. Once both teeth are done, the floss is
pulled out and the process repeated for the next two teeth.
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