Caring for braces and aligners

Teeth move a little at a time. These habits, from the clinic’s own instructions, keep the treatment on schedule and your teeth and gums healthy while it happens.

Looking after your braces

• Hands off. Do not touch or push the brackets and wires with your fingers, tongue, or a pen or pencil.
• Never bite with your front teeth, not even soft food. Cut food into small pieces and chew with your back teeth.
• No hard food. Toffee, chocolate, ice, maize and corn, biscuits, toast and all nuts (gram, peanuts, cashews, almonds) can break a bracket off. No list covers everything: if a food is hard, leave it.
• No fizzy drinks such as cola during treatment. They can loosen the glue that holds the brackets, and their sugar and acid mark the teeth.
• If anything breaks or comes off, keep the piece safely and bring it to your next appointment.
• If a wire breaks or comes out and hurts your tongue or cheek, do not try to remove it. Cover it with a small piece of cotton and call us.
• Avoid contact sports that can hit the front teeth, such as boxing or basketball. If you do play, wear a mouthguard; we can advise on one that fits over braces.

The first week, and after each adjustment

• Your teeth will feel tender for a few days. This is the teeth starting to move, and it settles.
• Eat soft food for those days: dal, rice, idli, eggs, soft fruit.
• If you need a painkiller, take one you have taken safely before, as the packet says.
• If a bracket rubs your cheek, dry it with a tissue and press a small ball of orthodontic wax over it. The cheek toughens up within a couple of weeks.

Cleaning around braces

• Brush after every meal, around each bracket, above and below the wire, with fluoride toothpaste.
• Use a small interdental brush between the brackets once a day, or floss with a floss threader.
• Look in the mirror after brushing. Brackets should be shiny, with no food left around them. Sugar trapped around brackets leaves white marks on the teeth.

Living with aligners

• Wear them all day and all night, taking them out only to eat, to drink anything other than plain water, and to clean. We tell you how many hours a day your plan needs.
• Brush your teeth before you put them back in, so food is not trapped against the teeth.
• Rinse the aligners in cool water and brush them gently. Hot water warps them.
• Keep them in their case when they are out. Most lost aligners are wrapped in a napkin and thrown away.
• Change to the next set on the day we tell you, not earlier.

Elastics and travel

• If you have elastics, wear them exactly as we showed you. Elastics worn on some days and not others slow the treatment down.
• Travelling? Take wax, spare elastics, your aligner case and your previous set of aligners.

When the braces come off

Teeth try to drift back for years after treatment. Your retainers stop that. Wear them exactly as we tell you, and bring them to every review.