You know flossing is important, and that you’ll need to take special care to floss your teeth after you get your braces on. But did you know you have to floss your braces as well? It’s not as strange as it sounds, and once you understand why you have to do it, you’ll have no trouble getting the job done.
Food and Your Braces
When you eat even brace-friendly foods, some of that food can get caught around the brace brackets and wires. Brushing carefully does remove a lot of this food debris. However, just as some can get caught in the spaces between your teeth, it can also get caught in crevices around your brace brackets and behind the wires that run from bracket to bracket. You must floss your braces in order to properly clean them.
It’s kind of difficult, not to mention time-consuming, to have to run floss around all four corners of each bracket, especially those on your back molars. So instead of trying to do that every day, you have two other options.
What to Do
First, as you floss, run the floss along the back of each wire that connects the brackets. This is easy to do once you’ve threaded the floss between your teeth; after you pull the floss between two teeth, move the half that’s behind the teeth forward, so that all of the floss is in front of the tooth but behind the wire. Run the floss along the back of the wire. Once you get the hang of it, this will take you only a couple of seconds to complete before moving on to the next tooth.
Next, use your disclosing tablets, and pay attention to where the color appears around each brace bracket. You can brush away anything above or below the bracket, but if you see something stuck right where the wire crosses into the bracket, try flossing those areas more carefully.
One More Option
If you have interdental brushes, try using those behind each wire. These have bristles that may do a better job of removing food debris from around the brackets and wires than thin floss might do. You can pick up packs of these brushes in the same sections that you find floss and toothpaste in stores.
If you need braces for kids Pensacola based, orthodontist Brodie Bowman can help. Dr Bowman DDS has offices in Fort Walton Beach and Niceville, FL. For more information on how to floss your braces, contact us today!