Dr. Gire will tell you that keeping your teeth clean is more important than ever when you have braces. Food bits have more spots than usual to hide in your mouth, so you must be diligent in order to avoid bad breath, swollen gums, discolored teeth and cavities. If you remove plaque regularly during treatment, you’ll experience better results and could possibly reduce your treatment time.
At Gire Orthodontics, we provide a home care kit that includes floss and floss threaders to each patient that gets braces. We demo their use with the patient’s new braces and on a typodont to ensure excellent compliance.
When we demo flossing, we stress to the patients that they should not use a “sawing” motion in between the teeth. We instruct the patients to use a “C” shape around each tooth on both sides and use an up and down motion at least 3 times.
Also, we stress home care in this order:
1. Floss
2. Brush
3. Rinse
You’d be surprised at how many patients brush first and then floss. We tell them to floss all the food and stuff from between the teeth, then brush it away, and finally rinse to get everything squeaky clean! For more tips, check out this helpful video:
Tags: orthodontist, Robert Gire