Life with braces/aligners

Yes, you can continue playing sport throughout your treatment. We recommend you wear a mouthguard to protect your teeth and orthodontic appliance. A mouthguard can be moulded to fit over your braces, or your aligner can be removed to wear your mouthguard.

As your teeth move during treatment, your mouthguard may need to be re-moulded to fit. At the completion of treatment we can organise a custom laboratory-made mouthguard to fit and protect your new smile.

Absolutely! If you play a wind instrument, there may be a short adjustment period, but most patients adapt quickly. We can give you some helpful tips.

Some people notice a slight lisp when they first start wearing aligners or certain appliances, but it usually disappears within a few days as your tongue adjusts. Braces typically don’t affect speech at all.

Avoiding breakages helps to prevent delays to your treatment time. In almost all cases, damage to appliances and braces is caused by eating hard, sticky, or brittle foods, or habits like chewing on finger nails, pens, drink bottles, and other hard objects. Also, avoid playing with your braces or appliances.

For aligners to work effectively, they need to be worn a minimum of 20–22 hours a day. Missing time or not following instructions can slow down your progress or even reverse results. If something’s not working for you, we’re here to help - open communication helps us keep your treatment on track. Following the instructions we provide via your Dental Monitoring messages is the key to a successful outcome.

Ideally, we recommend brushing after every meal, but we recognise that this is not always possible. Make sure to brush a minimum of twice a day, morning and evening, to ensure you are taking care of your appliances and the general health of your teeth.

Getting feedback regularly from the Dental Monitoring app will assist you along the way. You also need to floss as least once a day. A travel toothbrush is great for school or work. We’ll show you the best brushing and flossing techniques for your appliance.

Aligners and retainers should be rinsed with cold water and regularly given a brush with soap and cold water.

Excellent hygiene helps prevent tooth decay, gum issues, and tooth staining during treatment.
Graphics from our banding booklet.

An electric toothbrush isn’t essential, but it can make it easier to clean thoroughly around brackets or aligner attachments. If you already have one, great! If not, a soft manual toothbrush used properly can still do the job well. We’ll guide you on the best cleaning method.

Clear aligners: You can eat normally as long as you remove your aligners first. However, we still recommend tooth-friendly foods and drinks! Tap water is best for your teeth, it contains fluoride and is a great substitute for sugary, acidic drinks.

Braces: Avoid hard or chewy foods, which can damage your braces or cause wires to come loose, slowing your treatment progress. Sticky, sugary foods should also be avoided to prevent tooth decay.

Avoid:

• Hard crusts from bread and pizza
• Hard biscuits, popcorn and nuts
• Hard cereals
• Tough meat, beef jerky, pork crackle or chewing meat off the bone (eg. chicken or chops)
• Lollies – hard, sticky and chewy eg. toffees, Minties, hard boiled sweets
• Chewing gum or bubble gum
• Chocolate that is thick or has been kept in the fridge
• Crunchy muesli or fruit bars
• Chewing ice blocks
• Chewing on pens, drink bottles and fingernails
• Steak, crusty pies
• Tim tams from the fridge
• Celery, carrots and apples – these need to be cooked, chopped, or grated
• Corn on the cob - remove corn from the cob

Minimise sugar intake:

Sugar is dangerous to your teeth. Too much sugar causes acid attack which leads to permanent staining, enamel damage, and decay of your teeth. Don't forget the hidden sugars and acids in dried fruit, honey, jam, sugared cereals, and sports/soft drinks.

Whitening is not recommended with traditional braces, as it can lead to uneven results. With aligners it is sometimes possible to whiten, but check first with your orthodontist.

As your teeth move, temporary gaps may develop. This is expected and it makes space for re-aligning your teeth. These temporary gaps will be closed prior to finishing treatment.

With the expansion of the upper arch, a temporary gap develops between the upper front teeth. It is only temporary and will close naturally on its own with the teeth drifting back together, or we will close the gap several months into braces or aligner treatment.

Elastics are commonly used in orthodontic treatment to assist alignment of teeth or jaws. Timing of elastics is based on what is needed during your treatment progress to assist movement. Your elastic patterns may change, and also stop and start based on what is required.

The team make sure you feel confident knowing how and when you need to wear them. Elastics are worn any time other than eating and brushing.

Treatment time is individually based and varies between patients due to factors such as biology, cooperation and case difficulty.

Before treatment begins, you will receive an estimation of treatment time based on the starting position of your teeth and jaws. This is an estimation and can vary based on a number of factors such as missed appointments, multiple breakages through treatment, habits such as clenching or grinding, and oral hygiene.

Following the instructions given to you by the orthodontist and team will allow for increased accuracy of the estimated treatment time.

If you need Forsus springs, it will be discussed prior to starting treatment. The springs assist the direction of forward growth of the lower jaw to improve the position of the bite. Springs are used in combination with braces during growth.

Elastics can be helpful, but large corrections require an appliance that is fixed and in place for a period of approximately 4 months. Experience tells us that the use of Forsus springs and our advanced computer planning can avoid the need for the extraction of teeth.