Day 34 with the Damon Braces and Brushing

Status Summary: Slight pain on my lower left incisor

I apologize as I do not have pictures available today. I will be taking some later this week (hopefully).

Today I wanted to write about brushing your teeth while having braces. I still remember what the assistant told me on the first day, "You must brush your teeth after every meal. If you can't, make sure you rinse your mouth very well."

For the first week or so I had no problems brushing after every meal. This meant brushing in the morning, brushing after lunch, brushing after my 4pm snack, brushing after dinner and brushing before sleeping after another snack. I skipped breakfast but that was still a total 5 times of teeth brushing per day. I guess I was still in the "honeymoon" period, so it did not seem too cumbersome.

It has been almost 5 weeks and I must tell you I have been slacking! I hope the orthodontist doesn't yell at me next week at checkup. Right now I cut back on brushing to about 3 times a day - in the morning, after my 4pm snack, and before sleeping.

Don't get me wrong, brushing is extremely important and I should not be so lazy. I am not an orthodontist but it makes sense to brush after every meal. With the braces, your teeth are actually moving - some are even loose. I guess they are a lot more vulnerable and food will easily get stuck between teeth and even go under the gum. If you let it accumulate, it would probably cause gum recession. The other problem I could see happening is that food stuck on the brackets could hinder the effectiveness of the archwires (and they might smell after a while).

I have to admit - being healthy is not easy. I try to eat small meals to avoid overeating but that leads to more brushing of the teeth.

So be warned, braces comes with a lot of brushing :D.

P.S. You are supposed to brush each tooth for about 10 seconds. There is a technique for brushing which I will write about in a later post.