Warren Dental Hygienist Demonstrates How to Clean Braces

Hi, I’m Heidi. I am one of Dr. Gregory Apsey’s hygienists here in Warren, Michigan. I want to discuss with you two easy ways to clean a patient that has braces on their teeth. This is Russ. We’re going to clean underneath his braces. I’m going to show you two ways. You can take regular floss and something that you can find in a store, called a bridge threader. What you’re going to do is take your floss, simply thread it through just like your threading for sewing.  What you’re going to do here, let me get it right underneath the wire, here I’ll show you from the top. A lot of people feel comfortable doing it from the top. Pulling it through, you can use one strand, or you can have that doubled strand on there. What you’re going to want to do is get through the contact, get up as high as you can underneath the gum tissue on one side, and then get it up as high on the gum tissue, as you can on the other side. Bring it outta the contact, and then back out.

A second way to clean braces  is a proxy brush. And what you can do with a proxy brush is that you can get it underneath the wire just like this. You can also use it in between the teeth. Let me move my hand down so that you can see both ways. You can clean this way.  And you can also clean in between the teeth this way. The idea is not to push the proxy brush all the way through. It’s to just do some gentle cleaning while you’re under there. You can actually follow the gum line and go to the next tooth. There, when you’re in orthodontics or brace usually you have some spacing. And so here where there’s a larger space, you can just use the proxy brush all the way through. Go around for in the contact area and down.  Right. So there you right behind the wire. Show me that right behind the wire you end up front again.

Warren Dental Hygienist Demonstrates How to Clean Braces

For more information on how to clean braces in Warren, MI call our office at (586) 573-7700.

Warren Dental Hygienist Demonstrates How to Clean Braces