How to Clean Your Teeth While In Braces

The changing conditions in your mouth during orthodontic treatment are going to require a change in your oral hygiene routine so you can stay on top of it. You will need to get some new tools that reflect on the conditions inside your mouth, and you will also need to change the frequency of how often you brush, if you have been lax about oral hygiene until now. The reason you have to pay so much attention is because you are automatically considered to be at risk while getting orthodontic treatment, as there is now a larger surface for food and bacteria to get stuck on, and some of the tooth surfaces may not be accessible at all during the time of the orthodontic treatment. Because of this, you may need to change your oral hygiene routine drastically.

New tools and implements

Here is a list of some of the new tools you may need to purchase in order to make sure that you can clean your teeth even while in braces:

An interdental toothbrush:

You may have noticed that trying to use dental floss is a complete waste of time, as there is absolutely no way that it can clean the spaces it needs to get to. An interdental fulfils the same, absolutely indispensable function that dental floss does; namely, it cleans the gaps between your teeth. This is important, as this is one of the places that tooth decay starts from.

An oral irrigator:

An oral irrigator is much like the one that you can see in the dentist’s office. It is a tiny hand held device that can shoot a warm stream of water and clean out your teeth and tooth gaps with the force of the liquid pushing through. This can clean gunk out of your orthodontic device and from between the wiring and the brackets, and from between the teeth as well.

An orthodontic toothbrush:

An orthodontic toothbrush is like a regular one, except it has an indentation in the middle of the bristles, which are supposed to be able to brush the brackets.