Embracing Change: Lucky Winter’s here

Part two of our caring for braces article

At Orthosmile Orthodontics we aim to help make our patients’ braces experience as easy as possible. In part two of our caring for braces article we’ll explore what you should and shouldn’t eat while wearing braces.

By empowering you and your family we can help to ensure that your braces treatment goes smoothly.

2.      What you can and cannot eat

When it comes to caring for your braces it is important to remember they are delicately attached to your teeth. Braces are in fact fragile, so you need to exercise special care to avoid loosening or bending a wire.

What happens if a wire does come loose? Or a wire breaks?

If a wire breaks you can coat it with wax to protect your cheek, and then call us straight away to book an appointment. When you’re on the phone with us, let us know how bad it is. If you feel you need to see one of our team straight away, then please tell us. Only you know how bad the problem is.

Eating and how it affects your braces care

Eating is great. It’s an activity everyone enjoys on some level. However, when caring for your braces there are THREE types of food you should really avoid. If you do decide to eat these food types it can actually delay your orthodontic treatment.

The three types of food you should avoid are:

1.       Sticky foods

This is first because it probably the hardest: especially for teenagers. Please don’t eat foods like chocolates, gum and lollies (such as gummy bears, liquorice etc) because they all have the potential to cause damage to your braces. Not to mention what they can do to your teeth.

Generally speaking, the damage sticky foods cause to your braces is they can bend wires and even pull the cement seals from the many bands you have. That $2 chocolate may look enticing but just remember that it may be more costly if you’ve got to come and get a wire replaced or a cement seal redone.

2.       Carbonated drinks

Yes, this is not a food. But still, these drinks—braces or not—can damage your teeth. So, avoid soft drinks, energy drinks and ice teas (you might be surprised at the almost obscene amount of sugar in sports drinks and ice tea).

If the thought of your teeth slowly being eaten away by decay isn’t enough to deter you away from soft drink, then you can minimise the contact of sugar on your teeth by drinking through a straw. This way you can enjoy your sugary beverage with less sugar hitting your teeth.

The Orthosmile team would also recommend that you drink water after sugary carbonated drinks to rinse the sugar from your teeth and gums.

3.       Hard Foods

There are lots of reasons why you shouldn’t eat hard food while you’ve got braces. Three of which are hard foods can: do damage to the wires: loosen the cement under the bands: break the brackets or tubes from your teeth.

This is not to say that you can’t have any hard foods: it’s more about how you eat them. That is to say, cut up hard foods into smaller pieces so they are easier to chew.

Foods we’d emphatically say to avoid are things like hard candy, crispy taco shells, corn chips, ice blocks, crackling, nuts, hard biscuits and pizza crust.

What you can eat

Lucky winter is here: because we would recommend (at least in the initial few weeks of having braces placed) of eating foods such as soups, stews and curries. Good, warm wholesome foods which are great during the cold(ish) winter months.

Really it’s just about being conscious of the brackets and wires that are being used to slowly pull your teeth back into position. So picking up an apple and biting into it is probably not the best idea, but a sandwich with meat on it isn’t out of the question either.

Thank you for reading part 2 or our caring for braces blog. If you have any questions, or would like to book an appointment please don’t hesitate to contact us.