Preventing Tooth Decay While Wearing Braces

November 10, 2014April 1, 2016Posted in UncategorizedTagged arkansas orthodotnics, braces bentonville ar, braces fayetteville ar, braces fort smith ar, braces siloam springs, braces. arkansas braces, orhtodontist fayetteville ar, orhtodontist fort smith ar, orthodontistLeave a comment

“I have had braces for about two years. I admit that about 70 percent of the days I’ve had them I haven’t brushed more than once a day,” a teenager says in an online forum. He goes on to wonder if he can hold off tooth decay if he were to brush more often. If he came to us, we’d tell him that the answer is “yes,” but there’s also more he could do.

Since food gets stuck in unseen places on teeth when braces surround them, cleaning teeth requires both frequency and special tools. Here are some suggestions:

Brush after every meal or big snack. The less time food sits on your teeth, the less likely it will cause decay.
Use a soft bristle brush at a 45 degree angle or an electric toothbrush, which we frequently recommend because it allows you to easily brush each tooth individually. Be sure to brush all sides of your teeth. Fluoride toothpaste is best.
Use a floss threader or a proxabrush to clean between braces and under wires.
Use a Water Pik. The pressurized pulsating water it emits removes food particles from hard-to-reach places.
End your cleanings with a fluoride mouth wash, which helps disinfect under your braces and other spots where a brush can’t reach.
Even if you can’t brush after every time you eat, carry mouthwash to use after eating. At a minimum, rinse your mouth with plain water. It’s better than nothing.
Have a dental professional cleaning at least twice a year.

The type of food you eat can also increase the likelihood of decay as well as damage your braces. Any food high in sugar or starch can cause decay. Especially, avoid eating the following:

Sticky foods such as gum or caramel, which can get stuck on your braces and be hard to remove.
Crunchy treats like chips and popcorn, which can bend or break your wires.

Eating hard foods like apples, corn on the cob, and carrots can break your braces. Still, they can be part of a healthy diet, so cut them into small pieces so you don’t have to bite down hard.

If you have additional questions about how to care for your teeth, feel free to ask us when you’re in for your next appointment.

The Sweets You Can Eat on Halloween

October 24, 2014April 1, 2016Posted in UncategorizedTagged arkansas orthodotnics, braces bentonville ar, braces fayetteville ar, braces fort smith ar, braces siloam springs, braces. arkansas braces, orthodontist, orthodontiust FayettevilleLeave a comment

When you have braces, you have to be more careful about what you eat, but you don’t have to let your braces ruin your Halloween fun. Whenever you encounter a bag or bowl of candy, the general rule is the softer the candy, the better. Can it melt in your mouth? OK to eat.

Keep in mind that braces are affixed with a special type of orthodontic glue, and when you work the powerful muscles of your jaw to break apart hard candies, it can cause braces to pop off. Braces are also sort of fragile in their own way, and the strong impact of intense crunching can damage the brackets.

And you should avoid sticky, chewy candies (even if they’re soft). They aren’t always hard to chew, but they can get stuck in your brackets, making your braces hard to clean and fostering tooth decay.

Here’s a partial list to keep in mind:

Fine to eat

Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups
Hershey’s Kisses
Three Musketeers
Mounds Bars
Kit Kats (which are a little crunchy but still OK)
Crunch Bars (again, a little crunchy but OK)
M&M’s (but let ’em melt in your mouth first!)

Give away or trade

Snickers
Hershey’s Bars with Almonds
Jelly Beans
Laffy Taffy
Tootsie Rolls
Caramels
Twizzlers
Skittles
Chewing Gum
Gobstoppers

Even with the OK-to-eat candies, you don’t want that sugar clinging to your brackets for long. Be sure to brush soon after you eat anything sweet, and enjoy your holiday!

5 Oral Hygiene Tips for Patients in Braces

September 12, 2014April 1, 2016Posted in UncategorizedTagged arkansas orthodotnics, braces bentonville ar, braces fayetteville ar, braces fort smith ar, braces. arkansas braces, orthodontistLeave a comment

No one wants to look in the mirror and see food caught in their teeth. It can be embarrassing. But keeping food from getting stuck in your teeth isn’t just about maintaining appearances. A clean mouth means a healthy mouth. With proper oral hygiene, you’ll avoid the build up of plaque, discoloration, gingivitis and other problems.

When you first get braces, you’ll find that cleaning your mouth is harder because the brackets and wires make access to trapped food more difficult, especially near the gum line. At the same time, it’s even more important than ever to keep up with cleaning when you’re in braces. If you don’t, your treatment time could take longer. In a worst-case scenario, a patient can develop gum disease. When this happens, the braces must come off temporarily to let gums heal and their condition improve. Only then can the braces be put back on and treatment resume.

Did that scare you enough? But there’s no need to be worried. It’s actually not all that hard to maintain dental hygiene when you’re in orthodontic treatment. Here are our tips to keep you on top of your game:

1. Eat right and avoid junk
There are foods that are good for your teeth’s enamel like cheese, milk, meat, and chicken, so eat these often. And eating lots of vegetables is always a good idea. The worst foods for your teeth are those high in sugar, so avoid sugary drinks and candy. Especially stay away from hard or chewy candy that can crack your brackets or get stuck in them.

2. Brush often
Aim to brush your teeth four times a day, after each meal and just before bed. With braces, however, you must develop some new techniques. First brush your brackets straight on, then from an upper angle and then again from a lower angle. You can buy a tool called a proxa brush with bristles in a cone shape to help you target brushing in hard-to-reach areas.

3. Floss daily
You won’t be able to use normal floss when your teeth are in braces, but drugstores sell floss threaders with a stiffened end. You can push the end underneath the wire so you can reach your gumline.

4. Use a rinse
Even with dedicated brushing and flossing, you are unlikely to clean every small area where food and biofilm can hide. So make a habit of swishing at night with a fluoride rinse.

5. Keep your appointments
Naturally, you’ll do this anyway, but in addition to checking on the progress of your treatment, we can check for any signs of incipient gum disease. And while you’re in the chair, you can discuss any issues you might be having with keeping your braces clean, and we can recommend or prescribe extra products or rinses.

Three Ways to Protect Your Braces When Playing Sports – Arkansas Braces

September 8, 2014April 1, 2016Posted in UncategorizedTagged braces bentonville ar, braces fayetteville ar, braces fort smith ar, braces siloam springs, orhtodontist fayetteville ar, orhtodontist fort smith arLeave a comment

Three Ways to Protect Your Braces When Playing Sports – Arkansas Braces

Getting braces at Arkansas Braces in Fort Smith, AR doesn’t mean you have to give up your athletic activities, but it does mean you need to be a little more careful about them. A hard hit in a football game can lead to a popped-off bracket, a cut wire, and damage to your teeth or the inside of your mouth. And a really hard hit can dislodge a tooth or two. Even an impact in a less intense sport than football—say baseball, softball or even tennis—can harm your braces and your mouth.

If you play sports, you should look into these three ways to protect your braces from Arkansas Braces and your mouth:

Full-Facial Guard

A full-facial guard is the hard plastic piece that juts out in front of the mouth on football, hockey, and lacrosse helmets. If you wear braces, be sure to wear a helmet when you play rough contact sports (and even if you don’t wear braces, wearing a helmet provides general head safety). While a full-facial guard will protect your mouth from external impact, collisions and tackles can still cut the inside of your mouth or damage braces.

Mouth Guards

Mouth guards are made to absorb and disperse the shocks that come from collisions with other players, balls hitting your face, and falls to the ground. They are worn inside your mouth to fit directly over your upper teeth, and you can find some dual-arch models that are designed to fit over your lower teeth as well. There are many different types of mouth guards available at just about any sporting goods store. They should be used for sports like soccer, basketball, baseball, and volleyball. They are also a good idea for non-contact sports like gymnastics, biking, and skateboarding where a fall can still harm your mouth.

The Arkansas Braces team reminds you to make sure your mouth guard fits well, is comfortable and allows you to breathe. We don’t recommend the “boil-and-bite” type for our patients that wear braces, because these mouth guards can stick to brackets and pull them off when removed. Ask us during your next visit for specific advice about what mouth guard we recommend for your particular sport or to judge how well a recent purchase fits.

Dental Silicone or Wax

Dental silicone comes in long strips that you cut to size and press into your braces. A good brand is OrthoSil Silicone Dental “Wax” (which is not really made of wax). Dental silicone is a great way to supplement protection when you’re wearing a helmet with a full-facial guard. You can use the strips to protect the inside of your mouth during other athletic activities where an impact can cut your mouth or damage your braces. Depending on your preferences, you might favor actual dental wax or a product called Gishy Goo.

The team at Arkansas Braces in Fort Smith, AR hopes these tips help you have a safe and fun sports season!

Braces-friendly Recipes for Summer from Arkansas Braces

August 20, 2014April 1, 2016Posted in UncategorizedTagged braces bentonville ar, braces fayetteville ar, braces fort smith ar, braces siloam springs, orhtodontist fayetteville ar, orhtodontist fort smith arLeave a comment

Braces-friendly Recipes for Summer from Arkansas Braces

Braces can make your teeth feel sore, especially when you first get them or when they’re tightened. That’s one reason you’ll need to adjust your diet when in treatment. Anything crunchy can make sore teeth feel worse. Really hard foods or foods that strain your teeth (like when biting into an apple) can make brackets pop off. You’ll also need to avoid sticky foods because they get stuck in your braces and cause tooth decay.

For summer, that might seem like a bummer. Favorite summertime foods like ice cream cones, amusement-park taffy, and corn on the cob are out for the time being. But still, there are lots of summer foods that you can still enjoy. Arkansas Braces put together a few recipes.

Breakfast

Smoothies are a great summertime treat. They’re cool, fruity, and taste like a milkshake, only healthier. Strawberries are in season during summer, so try this Strawberry Oatmeal Breakfast Smoothie.
Blueberries are also in season during summer. Add them to pancakes, or try this recipe for blueberry muffins which we like because it has a low amount of sugar.
Scrambled eggs are soft just like a braces friendly dish should be, but they can get boring after a while. Up your egg game by adding some zucchini to your dish in this Summer Vegetable Frittata. It’s great for brunch, and there’s no reason you can’t make it for dinner either.

Soup

If you have the grill fired up in the backyard for hot dogs and burgers, also throw on some vegetables for this Grilled Vegetable Gazpacho. Gazpacho is a soup meant to be eaten cold, so you can put everything you grilled in the fridge to prepare the next day.

Sides

Even though you can’t have corn on the cob, that doesn’t mean you can’t have corn off the cob. Prepare the corn according to this guide to corn on the cob, and scrape off the kernels into a bowl. Then put them on your plate to eat with a fork.
Potato salad is another traditional side to go with BBQ. Try this Easy Potato Salad and just cook the potatoes a little longer than normal to make sure they’re nice and soft.

Dinner

Basil flourishes in the heat of summer, so make your own Basic Basil Pesto sauce to add to spaghetti, ravioli, or any other noodles. Replace the jarred pesto in this recipe for Creamy Pesto Chicken Broccoli with the fresh stuff you just made.
If you catch any fish over the summer, instead of frying it in a crunchy coating, just bake it with a little butter or olive oil. This recipe for Easy Baked Tilapia is fairly adaptable to whatever type of fish might bite your hook.

The team at Arkansas Braces in Fort Smith, AR hopes you enjoy all of these delicious treats while wearing braces. We look forward to seeing you at your next braces appointment in Fort Smith, AR.

Do I Really Have to Wear My Rubber Bands provided by Arkansas Braces?

July 16, 2014April 1, 2016Posted in UncategorizedTagged braces bentonville ar, braces fayetteville ar, braces fort smith ar, braces siloam springs, orhtodontist fayetteville ar, orhtodontist fort smith arLeave a comment

Do I Really Have to Wear My Rubber Bands provided by Arkansas Braces?

In a word, Yes. The orthodontists at Arkansas Braces would not have made rubber bands part of your orthodontic treatment if they didn’t determine them to be necessary.

The typical purpose of rubber bands is to correct an overbite or underbite. Once orthodontic treatment is over, your teeth will fit together nicely. Your smile will look lovely, and eating will be a lot easier. Rubber bands can also be used along the brackets of one jaw to help move teeth in a way that braces might not be able to do alone.

Tips for wearing rubber bands:

Wear them consistently – You will need to take out your rubber bands now and then, during brushing for example. But be sure to wear them consistently. If you take them out and don’t put them back in, even if just for a little while, your jaw or teeth can start moving back to original positions, which can significantly extend treatment time. In effect, you might be starting all over.
Use the right rubber bands – Rubber bands come in different diameters and elastic strengths. Make sure you use the ones given to you by us, or your jaw won’t move into place properly. If for some reason you want to order some rubber bands off the Internet, don’t do it. Instead, call us. We’ll give you the ones you need.
Don’t improvise – Patients have been known to double up on rubber bands thinking that it will make their teeth move faster. In reality, it doesn’t work that way. Patients might also wear a set of rubber bands longer than instructed instead of replacing them daily or as directed. But rubber bands can lose their elasticity quickly, and wearing one set too long will negatively affect treatment.

How you wear your rubber bands will depend on the instructions you received from your orthodontist at Arkansas Braces. Some patients who wear rubber bands need to wear them all the time. Others only need to wear them while sleeping. Some will need to wear them throughout their entire treatment time, but others will only need to wear them for a portion of it.

Fun Facts from Arkansas Braces

June 10, 2014April 1, 2016Posted in UncategorizedTagged braces bentonville ar, braces fayetteville ar, braces fort smith ar, braces siloam springs, orhtodontist fayetteville ar, orhtodontist fort smith arLeave a comment

Fun Facts about Dentistry

Just for fun, the Arkansas Braces team in Fort Smith, AR has assembled a list of fun facts about dentistry and orthodontics which you probably never knew:

Straight teeth have always been important to people. Rudimentary braces made of catgut and metal have been found in Egyptian mummies.

The spinner dolphin has more teeth than any other animal, up to 252 teeth. Compare that to people who have only 32 teeth as adults.
Siwak sticks, also called miswak, are a precursor to the toothbrush. They have been used for thousands of years and are still used today in parts of the Middle East and Africa. Siwak sticks are twigs from the arak tree, which fray into bristles when you chew on them and which you can then use to brush your teeth.
Dental disease has been with humans since prehistoric times, but the incidence of cavities increased dramatically in Europe in the 1600’s when imported sugar became part of the diet.
Bears, who have a large appetite for honey, are the only non-domesticated animal that gets cavities.
Contrary to popular belief, George Washington never had wooden false teeth. He did have dental problems all his life, however, and for a time wore partial dentures made of ivory.
As of 2011, there are 193,000 professionally active dentists in the United States, according to the American Dental Association. People who live in the District of Columbia have a wealth of dentists from which to choose, because the city has the most dentists per capita in the United States. The state with the least dentists per capita is Arkansas.

The team at Arkansas Braces in Fort Smith, AR hopes you enjoyed learning a few fun facts about braces and orthodontic treatment. If you are ready to get affordable braces in Fort Smith, AR – give the Arkansas Braces team a call!