Certain foods may affect the brace
When you first have the braces placed on your teeth, you may require time to get used to the tightened feeling.
Initially, for a few days, it may feel slightly uncomfortable with sore gums. For this reason, we advise eating soft foods only. This helps your teeth to adjust to the treatment. We also recommend not consuming very hard or chewy foods. Straighten my teeth today.
Soft foods can include soup with soft bread, mashed potatoes, rice, soft noodles, pasta, softly cooked meats or minced meat dishes, eggs and fruits.
Hard and chewy foods can include: raw carrots, chewy meat, nuts, hard chewy pieces of bread, beef jerky and chewing on ice.
Why certain foods are not recommended
Excessive Tooth Flexing
The reason why we do not recommend consuming hard foods is that every time you eat something very hard, you are not only crunching down on the food with your teeth but also you will be applying excessive muscle pressure.
The combination of hard food between two teeth with excessive muscle pressure causes excessive flexing of the teeth themselves.
Normally this is ok but when you have brace brackets stuck to the outside of the teeth then there can be a tendency for the brackets to come off. Looking to straighten your teeth?
When brackets come off apart from the inconvenience you experience from having to re-attend the dental practice for another appointment; you also may delay the treatment and introduce other unpredictable tooth movement complexities.
When brackets come off the impact of the actual treatment is lessened delaying the results. Are Braces Painful?
Which Foods Should You Avoid?
Sticky foods
We do not recommend sticky or chewy foods such as toffees and candy. This is because there may be a tendency to damage the wire or the brackets that hold the wire in place.
Chewing gum
We usually do not recommend chewing gum throughout the brace treatment. This is because it can get trapped in the brackets and wire.
Then fiddling around trying to remove it can inadvertently damage the wires specifically. Damaged or bent wires will not produce the desired results of the treatment.
No to sugary foods
Our advice is to try and not consume sugary foods that can contribute to dental decay and gum infections. Proper oral care is required when undergoing brace treatment to prevent build up of plaque and tartar.
Also eating foods multiple times throughout the day can keep your oral bacteria fired up most of the time causing damage. It is better to have three square meals rather than eat 5-6 times with snacks.
Our dental hygienist can help to provide proper oral hygiene advice to those wearing braces.
Staining
There are certain foods and drink that can easily stain the rubber ligatures that connect the wires to the brackets on the teeth. Although initially, these ligatures are clear, over time they can pick up the colour from the various foods you eat and drink.
However, certain foods will increase the level of staining more so than others, these include curries with turmeric, beetroots, berries and red wine. If you do experience this, your dentist can easily change the ligatures for you.
Call us on 01992 552115 for more information on our brace treatments. You can also book a free consultation with us at our London or Hertfordshire consultancy rooms.