Braces can give you the lovely smile that you have always wanted to have, but, if you aren't careful with making sure that you clean your teeth well, you may end up with the perfectly straight bite you always wanted, but with some cavities and discoloration. However, there are things that you can do that will help you keep your teeth healthy and bright while you are wearing your braces. 

Floss Picks

Flossing is important to your dental health and to keeping you from getting cavities in between your teeth. However, flossing while you are wearing braces can be difficult. There are a variety of tools that you can try that will make it easier for you to keep your teeth flossed. Floss picks are one way to do that. They have a small amount of floss strung in between two prongs. You can work that floss in between your teeth and around your braces much easier than you can work a longer piece of floss. The picks also generally have a part on the other end that you can use to get rid of debris around the brackets on your teeth. 

Rinse First

Before you brush your teeth, make sure that you rinse your mouth out with some water. It seems like it should be the other way around, but rinsing out your mouth first will help to get rid of any food particles that you may still have caught around your brackets or around your gums. That will make it easier for you to brush your teeth because you don't have to worry about that debris getting left behind, nor do you have to worry about that debris actually scraping your teeth and causing more damage. 

Know the Right Angle

When you are brushing, you want to make sure that you are brushing your teeth at the right angle so that they will stay nice and clean. First, you want to brush your gumline. To do that, you want to hold your brush at about a 45 degree angle and carefully do your whole gumline. Then you want to put your brush on top of the brackets and push down through the wire and brush your teeth and the top part of your brackets. When you have done all your teeth, you want to do the same thing on the bottom, only pushing up through the wire instead of down.

Getting straight teeth and the perfect smile isn't going to help you all that much if you end up with discolored or damaged teeth when your braces come off. For more help, get in touch with a professional like Accent On Dentistry - Rowena R Martir DMD.

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