Wearing braces can pose challenges for your daily life and habits. One in particular is trying to keep your teeth and gums clean.

Braces or not, your oral hygiene needs to be thorough. Every day, your teeth accumulate a thin film of bacteria and food particles called dental plaque that can cause tooth decay or gum disease. It's essential to remove as much as possible each day by brushing and flossing.

That's a more difficult task with braces. The brackets and wires interfere with accessing many of your teeth's surfaces with a toothbrush or floss. As a result, braces wearers on average have a higher incidence of dental disease than non-wearers.

But while it's difficult to keep your mouth clean wearing braces, it's not impossible. Here are some tips and tools for making oral hygiene easier during orthodontic treatment.

A low-sugar diet. Besides items like chips that could damage your braces, you should also limit your consumption of foods and snacks with added sugar.  This carbohydrate is a primary food source for disease-causing bacteria. Limiting sugar in your diet can help reduce plaque buildup.

The right toothbrush. Brushing with braces is easier if you use a soft multi-tufted brush with microfine bristles. The smaller bristles maneuver better around the braces than larger bristled brushes. You'll still need to make multiple passes above and below the wires to be sure you're brushing all tooth surfaces.

Flossing tools. Traditional flossing using just your fingers can be next to impossible to perform with braces. But a tool like a floss holder or threader can make it easier to get between teeth. You might also try a water flosser that removes plaque from between teeth with a pressurized spray of water.

Dental treatments. Your dentist can give your teeth extra protection while you're wearing braces with topically applied fluoride to strengthen enamel. Using mouthrinses with an antibacterial ingredient like chlorhexidine may also reduce harmful bacteria.

Be sure you also keep up regular visits with your family dentist while wearing braces, and especially if you begin to notice puffy and reddened gums or unusual spots on your teeth. The sooner any case of dental disease is detected, the less impact it will have on your dental health.

If you would like more information on dental care while undergoing orthodontic treatment, please contact us or schedule an appointment for a consultation. You can also learn more about this topic by reading the Dear Doctor magazine article “Caring for Teeth During Orthodontic Treatment.”

Narcotics have long played an important role in easing severe pain caused by disease, trauma or treatment. Healthcare professionals, including dentists, continue to prescribe them as a matter of course.

But narcotics are also addictive and can be dangerous if abused. Although addictions often arise from using illegal drugs like heroin, they can begin with prescriptive narcotics like morphine or oxycodone that were initially used by patients for legitimate reasons.

As a result, many healthcare providers are looking for alternatives to narcotics and new protocols for pain management. This has led to an emerging approach among dentists to use non-addictive non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs) as their first choice for pain management, reserving narcotics for more acute situations.

Routinely used by the public to reduce mild to moderate pain, NSAIDs like acetaminophen, ibuprofen or aspirin have also been found to be effective for managing pain after many dental procedures or minor surgeries. NSAIDs also have fewer side effects than narcotics, and most can be obtained without a prescription.

Dentists have also found that alternating ibuprofen and acetaminophen can greatly increase the pain relief effect. As such, they can be used for many more after-care situations for which narcotics would have been previously prescribed. Using combined usage, dentists can further limit the use of narcotics to only the most severe pain situations.

Research from the early 2010s backs up this new approach. A study published in the Journal of the American Dental Association (JADA) concluded that patients receiving this combined ibuprofen/acetaminophen usage fared better than those only receiving either one individually. The method could also match the relief power of narcotics in after care for a wide range of procedures.

The NSAID approach is growing in popularity, but it hasn't yet displaced the first-line use of narcotics by dental professionals. The hesitancy to adopt the newer approach is fueled as much by patients, who worry it won't be as adequate as narcotics to manage their pain after dental work, as with dentists.

But as more patients experience effective results after dental work with NSAIDs alone, the new approach should gain even more momentum. And in the end, it promises to be a safer way to manage pain.

If you would like more information on dental pain management, please contact us or schedule an appointment for a consultation. You can also learn more about this topic by reading the Dear Doctor magazine article “Are Opioids (Narcotics) the Best Way to Manage Dental Pain?”

A wave of madness is about to sweep across Indianapolis and onto television screens across America—March Madness, that is. That's right: After its cancellation in 2020 due to COVID-19, the famed NCAA men's basketball tournament is back with all 68 games scheduled to be played in and around Indianapolis. As you can imagine, there will be numerous health precautions, and not just for the pandemic—there should also be mouthguards aplenty.

Why mouthguards? Although you might think football and hockey would be rougher on players' teeth, gums and jaws, basketball actually tops the list of sports with the most dental injuries. Such an injury occurring from a split-second contact with another player could take years to overcome.

Fortunately, mouthguards are a proven way to reduce sports-related mouth injuries among professional and amateur basketball athletes. Made of a pliable plastic, mouthguards cushion against blunt forces to the mouth generated during play (and not only formal games—practices and scrimmages too).

But while wearing a mouthguard is a no-brainer, choosing one can be a little intimidating. True, they all work on the same principle, but there are dozens of types, designs and price ranges.

We can, however, distill them down to two basic categories: “boil and bite” and custom mouthguards. You'll find the first kind online or in a local retail sporting goods store. It's named so because you first place it in hot water to soften it, and then place it in the mouth and bite down to create an individual fit.

As an inexpensive option, boil and bite mouthguards provide a level of protection. But they also tend to be bulky and uncomfortable, which can tempt players to wear them less. And the softer plastic (compared to custom guards) allows for a lot of jaw (and in turn, teeth) movement, which can cause teeth to loosen over time.

Custom mouthguards, on the other hand, are created by dentists based on impressions made of the wearer's mouth. As such, the fit tends to be more precise, requiring less material than the boil and bite variety, thus affording a greater degree of comfort. And there's less potentially damaging jaw movement with a custom mouthguard. As you might imagine, custom mouthguards are more expensive, but compared to the potential treatment cost for a sports-related dental injury, it's money well spent.

Investing in a custom mouthguard for your family basketball (or football, hockey or baseball) player is a sound way to protect their dental health. And that's not madness at all.

If you would like more information about athletic mouthguards, please contact us or schedule a consultation. To learn more, read the Dear Doctor magazine article “Athletic Mouthguards.”

Do you remember your first new car? It purred like a kitten with a brilliant finish you could see a mile away. And my, oh my, the attention you gave it: cleaning, polishing, regularly checking the fluids and other maintenance. That's what comes with pride of ownership—and it's an equally fitting attitude to have with your mouth.

World Oral Health Day is a great opportunity this month to renew your care for your mouth and its primary inhabitants, your teeth and gums. This March 20th, the FDI World Dental Federation wants you to “Be Proud of Your Mouth” for all it makes possible in your life: helping you eat, helping you speak and, of no lesser importance, helping you smile.

So how can you show pride in your mouth?

Keep it clean. Brushing and flossing are the two most important tasks you can do to prevent dental disease and ensure a healthy mouth. It takes only five minutes a day to clear away accumulated dental plaque, a thin film of bacteria most responsible for destructive tooth decay and gum disease. The only catch? To get the most from your oral hygiene efforts, you'll need to brush and floss every day, rain or shine.

Keep it fed. The food your teeth help you eat also benefits them—if they're the right foods. Fresh fruits and vegetables, proteins and dairy items like milk or cheese all contain vitamins and minerals that strengthen teeth against disease. On the flip side, there are foods you should avoid, particularly processed foods and snacks containing added sugar. Sugar feeds the oral bacteria that causes disease.

Keep it maintained. Routine dental visits are just as important for your mouth as routine mechanic visits are for your car. During these regular visits, we'll thoroughly clean your teeth of any missed plaque, especially a hardened version called tartar. It's also a time for us to look more closely at your teeth and gums to uncover any emerging problems that require treatment.

With a little time, effort and discipline, you can protect your teeth and gums from disease, and help them to be as healthy as they can be. The dividends will spill over into the rest of your life, with additional benefits for your physical, mental and social well-being. A healthy mouth is vital to a healthy life.

So, take pride in your mouth and make a commitment today to care for it. And if you haven't seen us in a while, an appointment for a dental cleaning and checkup could be your best move toward healthier teeth and gums.

If you would like more information about best dental care practices, please contact us or schedule a consultation. To learn more, read the Dear Doctor magazine articles “Daily Oral Hygiene” and “Dental Hygiene Visit.”

In recent years, dental implants have helped traditional bridgework take a giant leap forward. A few strategically placed implants can provide the highest support and stability we can currently achieve for this well-known dental restoration.

Implants derive this stability from the bone in which they're imbedded. Once surgically installed, the bone around a metal implant begins to grow and adhere to its titanium surface. Over time, this creates a strong anchor that firmly holds the implant in place.

But the implants' stability can be threatened if the gums around them become diseased. Gum disease, a bacterial infection caused mainly by dental plaque, can advance silently below the gum surface until it ultimately infects the bone. This can cause significant bone loss around an implant, which can weaken it to the point of failure.

To avoid this scenario, it's important to prevent gum disease by flossing daily to remove accumulated dental plaque between the implant-supported bridge and the gums, particularly around the implants. This kind of flossing around bridgework is more difficult than flossing between teeth, but it can be done with the help of a device called a floss threader.

A floss threader is a small plastic hand tool with a loop on one end and a stiffened edge on the other (similar to a sewing needle). You begin by threading about 18" of dental floss through the loop, and then work the other end of the threader between the bridge and gums to the other side.

With the floss threaded between the bridge and gums, you can now remove it from the threader, grasp each end, and floss around the sides of each implant you can reach. You'll then need to repeat the process by removing the floss, rethreading it in the threader and inserting it into the next section between implants, continuing to floss until you've accessed each side of each implant.

You can also use pre-packaged floss thread sections with a stiffened end to facilitate threading. But whichever product you use, it's important to perform this task each day to prevent a gum infection that could rob you of your implant-supported bridge.

If you would like more information on oral hygiene practices with dental work, please contact us or schedule an appointment for a consultation. You can also learn more about this topic by reading the Dear Doctor magazine article “Oral Hygiene for Fixed Bridgework.”