How To Be Sure You’re Flossing Properly With Braces
Flossing with braces is one of the most difficult jobs you have to perform. Orthodontists constantly hear complaints about how challenging flossing is when their patients wear braces. While you might complain about wearing braces, flossing is essential to your oral hygiene.
Why Flossing?
To have the best dental health possible, you need to brush and floss your teeth after every meal or snack when you wear braces. In fact, it is even more important that you brush and floss well with braces because food constantly gets trapped in the brackets and wires. No matter how thin your brackets and wires are, you will have trapped food particles there.
Flossing is one of the best ways there is to keep your teeth and gums healthy. Once you spend time wearing braces, you want to come out of your braces with gorgeous, sparkling teeth–rather than with cavities showing up once your braces are gone.
How Will I Know If I Am Flossing Properly?
There are two ways to make sure you are flossing as well as you can when you wear braces. First, you can use the traditional flossing method. Your orthodontist can give you flossers to help you floss in between your wires and brackets. Flossers work well with traditional string floss. To help the process along, you may want to rinse your mouth with mouthwash first because that helps dislodge the food particles.
If you don’t want to floss in the traditional way, you can opt for a mechanical flosser. These flossers use jets of water to blast food particles away from your teeth, gums, and braces. Many flossers use batteries, or they have recharging stations, so you can take them anywhere.
The best way to tell if you are flossing correctly, check with your orthodontist or dentist. They will be able to let you know if your oral hygiene game is on point.
