If you are getting your braces soon you should know the dentist will place little rubber bands called ligatures that have the noble duty of fixing the archwire to the braces.
These ligatures will be changed on a frequent braces determined by your dentist (I get mine changed every weekend or once every two weeks).
Let’s set the record straight: braces bands are made of stainless steel, not rubber and they can only be removed by your dentist when your orthodontic treatment ends.
Braces bands are as metal covers placed around the upper and lower molars that serve as anchorage for the arch wire.
As a grown-up you are conscious that dental braces are a delicate thing, and after all you the money and time invested in them, you better take good care of them.
The problem is with children who usually have hard time getting used to them, that is why parents must establish these braces dental care rules before finding their kid trying to remove them with tweezers, scissors and God knows with what else.
Avoid eating hard or sticky foods as candy, ice, and bubble gum (sorry, but this is a definitely NO, NO) and others that can break the arch wire and/or the braces, and therefore delay your treatment.
Do not bite your nails, pencils, toothpicks or any other object that can tweak the arch wire and alter the normal movement of your teeth.
Use braces toothbrush and try to give yourself the most through brushing and flossing to prevent pieces of food and sugar get stuck between the braces and form tartar, that will lead to gum inflammation and bleeding, cavities and teeth stains.
In case wisdom teeth emerge partially, and the rest of them stay submerged, the surrounding gum may get infected and inflamed.
This leads to swelling of the cheek and the neck. Becomes worse in times of stress… This swelling, called pericornitis, tends to become acute in times of high stress when the immune system is not at its best condition, and when bacteria lie in wait for of infection the crown of the wisdom tooth.
How bacteria gets into wisdom teeth
Usually at the end of the mouth, where wisdom teeth are placed, there is a gum flap that may extend over the tooth’s surface. Debris and food may get trapped inside under this gum, and this obviously leads to infection.
When wisdom teeth emerge well or bad. When the wisdom tooth emerges in good position, the flap can be trimmed, so any infection will be avoided. This procedure is called Operculectomy.
When the tooth does not emerge because there is no place for it, then it has to be extracted. A wisdom tooth removal is done by an oral surgeon.
Read More!Although you can always buy a new toothbrush, you still must take care of it not only to make it last longer but to prevent dental disease and injured caused by toothbrushes in bad conditions.
If you have dental braces - as I proudly do- you know what a nag the rubber bands are, they hurt when the dentist replaces them and how terribly tarnished they look after a week more or less.
Braces rubber bands have a very important purpose: moving you teeth back and forward, depending on the purpose the dentist wants to give them. These long elastics are placed in diagonal way. They are not the little ligatures attached to each brace.
I also recommend you avoiding hard-chewing meals as bread and meat, too (I have some ice cream to ease the pain).
Do not worry; braces bands are made of medical latex safe for human consumption. It will be evacuated through the feces.
Have you ever read those little letters on your toothpaste tube? Probably you have, but the thing is: Do you understand what those long names mean?
Soap, shampoo, beauty products…and toothpaste, they all contain chemicals. And despite these are well integrated within the products, they can be released over time as result of the constant use and cause damage to your health and the environment.
Dental toothpaste contains triclosan, an antibacterial substance that can irritate your eyes and skin, and that might cause cancer.
Colgate toothpaste contains triclosan and other products of Colgate-Palmolive have it too. However, it contains it minimal quantities and the chloroform created when combined with water is minimal as well, as their have stated due to the investigation of Chinese authorities on soaps and toothpastes with triclosan.
What is this Breath RX that has been haunting me for days?
When there is something going on within us our own organism is the first one to send us the alarm. And bad breath…gee, what an alarm it is!
If you have been lots of popping mints and Listerine strips lately with no success, you should book an appointment with the doctor because that stinky breath might be the symptom of severe conditions.
Some conditions as HIV/AIDS, periodontal disease, cancer, eating disorders, STD’s, among others break out in our mouth.
How come if my breath stinks my heart gets affected?
Mouth ulcers really suck; they are so painful and embarrassing if you want to kiss someone (you just avoid it).
Mouth ulcers are still a mysterious condition, though we know that citrics have healing and relieving properties that we can use to prepare a homemade remedy against mouth sores. So this is how we do it:
Step 1: Take some oranges and lemons, peel them and put the skins to dry on fire. Toast them to make them get dry but do not let them get burnt.
Step 2: Grind the skins and blend them with toothpaste (any toothpaste). Pour the mix in a tight-closed container.
You will see how mouth sores reduce and disappear. This homemade paste helps disinfect your mouth and prevent the outbreak of mouth ulcers.
Read More!Your newborn baby does not have any teeth yet, so you do not have to "brush" her teeth as if she were a bigger kid. However, you do have to take her of her gums. Dental care for children should be as early as possible.
From 0 to 18 months
What most pediatricians recommend is dipping a gauze pad in bottle water and introducing it gently with clean hands into the baby's mouth. Use your index o pinky finger to cleanse her upper and lower gums and under the tongue. If it is necessary, change the gauze.
From 18 to 29 months
Buy a small baby toothbrush and a small plastic cup for it. Make sure the bristles are very soft. Rinse it and introduce it gently in his mouth and brush in circles the upper and lower teeth and molars, while doing so rinse the toothbrush. Let the baby spit, though if you can not make her do so just rinse the toothbrush as many times needed.
Older than 29 months
If your kid can speak and understand basic instructions teach him how to brush his teeth by himself. Put a bit of toothpaste on his toothbrush or dental rinse gel and emphasize on making him rinse his mouth.
We know that American nutrition has been in deep trouble for long, butluckily more and more people are becoming aware and trying to have a healthier lifestyle. Good. And here goes one more reason to make change happen: fiber rich foods will keep you children teeth problem free.
Apples, carrots, jam beans and other fiber rich foods must take part in your child’s daily diet, but you have to serve them in large slices to make him chew in order to strengthen his bite.
When you fee you child with soft, mashed, minced or grinded foods you are not making him chew enough and this is the main cause of misaligned or crooked teeth due to the lack of space in the gums.
Your child’s jaw needs to work out as any other muscle or bone in his body. So, as soon as he is able to chew, replace the baby food for sliced –not grated- food to exercise his jaw bones.
Braces are far from sexy and comfortable – though some people fancy them sexually, but this is not our subject- therefore, dentists came up with one the coolest dentistry innovations to make patients have and better looking: Invisalign, an invisible way to straighten teeth without ugly looking braces!
Invisalign consists of custom made invisible retainers that hold your teeth instead of the heavy duty wires and braces. You wear the invisalign aligners for two weeks, you just take them off to eat, drink, brush, floss, etc. The dentist will replace the invisalign retainers with the next in the series – your teeth will move little by little- until your teeth adapt to the final position he has determined.
To get Invisalign braces you have to consult Invisalign certified dentists (this is a relatively new dentistry treatment, so there are not many good orthodontists out there doing it) that will determine the best alignment for both your appearance and your bite.
If the dentist determines you are a perfect Invisalign candidate, congrats! The next step is taking molds and taking X-rays or digital pictures from your teeth, from which your aligners will be fashioned. The number of aligners you will depend on how much movement your teeth need to get straightened.
We all want brighter and whiter teeth for sure; it is our right to look good and fab smile. However, tooth bleaching is not necessarily the best solution for you... or for me.
Most people decide to take over the bleaching treatment by themselves getting over-the-counter whitening products, however the wisest thing to do is going to the dentist to get an evaluation of your dental condition, and therefore recommend the best dental solution for your case.
Depending on the type and condition of your dental stains, you dentist will suggest among these the best tooth bleaching treatment for you:
Great, seems I have plenty of options, but still what works better for me?
If you have very yellow teeth you are quite lucky. That’s right, you are because your teeth respond better to bleaching than those with a grayish o brownish coloring, or even better than teeth stained by tetracycline (a.k.a. Sumycin, Terramycin, Tetracyn, Panmycin, etc.) and dental flouring can not get totally white after bleaching.
If you have veneers, fillings or crowns on your frontal teeth, dental bleaching is NOT for you because the dental bleacher will have no effect on the material of these dental applications.
If you have sensitive teeth and or periodontal disease, you should avoid chemical tooth whitening since they can irritate your gums.
Breastfeeding your child asleep boosts “bottle cavities” due to the cleansing effect of saliva decreases during sleep time, leaving their teeth unprotected to the high content of sugar concentrated in his/her mouth.
These bottle cavities attack milk teeth and they can be very destructive: they can even damage fifteen dental pieces!
This kind of dental cavities mainly appear in 6-month and four to five-year-old children. It starts destroying the enamel. Small white stains appear in your baby’s teeth that eventually go yellow, spread and become darker.
Teeth and molars would be able to be regenerated in a matter of five or ten years, indicates the Washington Post.
In theory, it would be possible to remove a damaged tooth from your mouth and reconstruct it out from the mother cells within it and transplant it again in your mouth, which means a much better and compatible alternative to replace missing teeth than metallic dental implants used nowadays.
Titanium dental implants are prone to get loose and produce infections as gingivitis and periodontitis due to the incompatibility between the bone and the dental implant.
This new treatments means great news for patients who can not be candidates –they have not enough bone in their jaws to support titanium screws - for regular dental implant surgery or anyone who prefers dental implants derived from his own natural teeth and molars.
This naturally leads us to think about our milk teeth and wisdom molars, they are just the perfect pieces for dental regeneration (means the days of our good old friend the tooth fairy will come to an end?).
In these days of recycling, we see something like this happening other formerly considered waste materials like newborn umbilical cords, since new therapeutic uses are discovered for mother cells contained in the blood of umbilical cords.
