How do you clean your teeth when you have fixed braces?

Photo showing the reception area at Oasis Orthodontics

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June 11th, 2021

How do you clean your teeth when you have fixed braces?

Hi, I’m Dr. Mark Knoefel from Oasis Orthodontics, where smiles come to life.

People often wonder, “Oh my goodness, I’ve got all these braces on my teeth. Now, how on earth am I going to keep them clean? I mean, I had enough of a hard time just brushing and flossing without all those hardware on there. How am I going to do this now with brackets and wires and elastics and all this other stuff?” Well, luckily we have options. And, frankly, now with electric toothbrushes and Waterpik Flossers… Anyway, it’s very easy to keep your braces clean.

So we at Oasis, actually recommend to all of our patients to purchase an electric toothbrush and to use the water flosser. Now you might say, “Oh, okay, well, I got a wonderful manual toothbrush and I got floss as well. So why would I invest in these two pieces of machinery?” Well, let’s face it. Honestly, do you really floss every day? How many people really do? So at the end of the day, if I have the choice of someone not flossing at all, or using the Waterpik Flosser and actually cleaning in between the actual braces and getting all that debris out of there…by the way, Waterpik Flossers also stimulate the gum tissue, so that nice pulsating stream of water stimulates the gums as well.

So given the choice, I’d rather have this used very well. And some studies actually seem to suggest that Waterpik Flosser is actually doing an even better job than traditional floss. Either way, better, far better than not flossing at all, because definitely it can get pretty gross when there’s debris, pieces of food, plaque stuck in there, not to mention that the gums really get swollen, sometimes swell in between the braces and they start bleeding. And then we’re into the problem that sometimes we can’t even move the teeth anymore because the gums are too puffy. So extremely, extremely important to brush and water floss.

Now, the thing is, with these water flossers, as you could just see, they’re very effective, but boy, water sprays everywhere. Okay? So you’re in the washroom… you got this water spraying around your mouth, there’s water coming out of your mouth. It’s going all over the sink. It’s going beside the sink. It’s going onto the mirror. And so you’re like, “Yeesh, do I really want to do this?” Well, you kind of have to because it’s just that effective.

So one of my team members, Julie, had the brilliant idea of just saying to our patients, “I use my Waterpik Flosser in the shower.” Brilliant. Because now you can squirt this water everywhere and it won’t matter because you’re in the shower anyway. So thanks, Julie, that was a great tip. And since Julie came up with that idea, that’s what we’ve been saying to all our patients here at Oasis.

That’s all for this video. We would love for you to check our YouTube channel and see how we answer some of those other questions about orthodontics that you just want to know more about.