Remember to Take out Your Dentures Every Night

Getting braces means you'll need to take extra steps to ensure that your teeth and gums stay healthy. When you eat, chances are food will get under the wires connecting your brackets, and it will need to be removed to maintain your oral health. Thankfully, getting food out from under your wires isn't hard with a few simple tools. Give these three options a try to keep your braces clean.

Interdental Brush

Interdental brushes are like tiny little toothbrushes. The brushes are designed to slide between teeth to aid with cleaning, which you can certainly use them for. However, when it comes to having braces, interdental brushes are one of the best tools you can have to get food debris out from under your wires after a meal. Interdental brushes can be bought at any dental care aisle in grocery stores and drug stores. The brushes typically come with caps, so you can keep a small sanitary supply of them with you at all times to clean your braces after meals.

Dental Pick

Dental picks are actually professional-grade dental tools, but they're available for everyone to buy.

You've probably seen your dentist use a dental pick before. It's the metal tool with a sharp hook on the end. This hook can be used to snag bits of food and debris out from under the wires of your braces. It's small, so it can navigate tight spaces, and it's tip is so delicate that you can carefully remove food debris from around the brackets of your braces, too.

Water Flosser

Lastly, a water flosser is a great tool to have to keep your teeth and gums healthy while you have braces. Water flossers can blast away food and bacteria readily.

Water flossers aren't portable, so keeping one of the above tools with you when you're out of your house is a good idea. However, water flossers are one of the easiest ways of blasting away food debris when you're at home. The high water pressure quickly pushes debris and bacteria away. It can also help to keep your gums healthy while you have braces.

Keeping your teeth and gums healthy with braces is absolutely a must. With one or more of the tools above, you can greatly reduce the amount of bacteria and debris under your braces, which will help to keep you from getting cavities or gum disease. Talk to a business like Poulson Orthodontics for more information.