After getting braces, you get worried about maintaining oral hygiene. At the same time, you need to be careful to prevent damage to braces. So, Can you use an electric toothbrush with braces?
You can use an electric toothbrush safely, as it doesn’t hurt your braces until you follow the proper technique of using it. Moreover, orthodontists suggest using electric toothbrushes while wearing braces, because they can clean your teeth and braces more effectively than manual toothbrushes.
Some studies also show that it can help you maintain oral hygiene better during orthodontic treatment.
But, how can it be possible? Should you get it or is there an alternative?
Let’s find it out.
Why should you use an electric toothbrush with braces?
Before knowing about the importance of using electric toothbrushes with braces, you should know why maintaining oral hygiene with braces is the prime concern.
Mostly, you get braces when you have crooked or crowded teeth. This condition isn’t good for your oral health.
In those cases, teeth are tightly fitted and you face difficulty to clean teeth properly. With that, when you get braces, it makes it so difficult for you to maintain oral hygiene.
The reason is brackets and wires are attached to your teeth. It creates rough areas in your mouth where foods and plaque can get deposited easily.
You can’t remove that food debris and plaque with a manual toothbrush completely. So, gradually you develop tooth sensitivity, decay, and staining.
Electric toothbrushes are designed to remove particles from your teeth and braces completely. Besides that, the electric has many special features and benefits for which you should get it for braces.
Benefits of using an electric toothbrush with braces
Here are the advantages of using an electric toothbrush with braces.
Special cleaning technique
An electric toothbrush uses special types of bristles and produces special movement.
When you use the toothbrush, thousands of movements per minute take place. You don’t get it from a regular toothbrush.
The bristles of the electric toothbrush vibrate and produce a rotation movement that helps remove plaque and food debris from teeth, gums, and braces more effectively and easily.
Not only that but also some electric toothbrushes use different rotation movements. The bristle of an electric toothbrush can rotate in one-directional rotation (rotary) and some rotate in multiple directions (counter-rotational).
They can also use special types of rotation like rotating-oscillating and oscillating-pulsating.
In the rotating-oscillating opposite directional rotation of the bristle with different length occurs. Oscillating-pulsating is a more advanced feature to perform cleaning more effectively.
Get into hard to reach areas
As the electric toothbrush has special features like rotation movement and flowing water, it can remove plaque and food debris from those hard to reach areas.
Even if you try to clean that area with a normal toothbrush, you may fail because of the braces and position of the teeth. But, an electric toothbrush can help you perform this task.
Remove all food debris
You have to remove food debris manually when you use a regular toothbrush. So, you may fail to produce the movement that needs to remove food debris completely.
Moreover, you can’t move the bristle faster where it’s necessary. Sometimes, trying to do that may damage the braces or teeth.
But, an electric toothbrush can perform all of these activities automatically and provide you a deeper cleaning. You just need to place the brush in the right place and direction.
Remove Plaque effectively
Many studies suggest that Electric toothbrushes can remove more plaque than effectively the manual toothbrush. Plaque removal is important as it produces gum disease, tooth sensitivity, decay, and staining over time. Bacteria produce acid with help of food debris and plaque and destroy your teeth and gums.
Act as a guide with the help of a pressure sensor and timer
An electric toothbrush is more than a toothbrush. It guides you to maintain a tooth cleaning schedule.
It has a special timer by which it will tell you when to stop brushing your teeth. Usually, people don’t give enough time to clean their teeth.
But, you need to clean your teeth for at least 2 minutes. The brushing timer of an electric toothbrush gives you a signal after 2 minutes of toothbrushing.
So, you can brush your teeth until you hear the alert. It also helps you to track how long you brush on each quadrant of your mouth. It’s especially helpful for the kids since they don’t like to brush their teeth following all the methods.
Besides, some electric toothbrushes also have pressure sensors. You will get alert when you brush too hard. This protects you from damaging the braces and teeth.
Prevent you from doing any wrong
An electric toothbrush has so many features that it won’t let you do any wrong. Using the timer the toothbrush prevents you from brushing your teeth in less than 2 minutes.
With the help of different cleaning modes, it prevents harmful effects on your teeth and braces.
It cleans teeth thoroughly and deeply by using special tooth movements and other features.
As a result, your brushing habit improves. You don’t need to worry about oral hygiene with braces as well.
Varieties of cleaning modes
You may be worried if the electric toothbrush is safe for braces. But, in reality, it does more than that.
Most electric toothbrushes use different cleaning modes to serve different purposes. You can select which mode is the best for your teeth.
You get the tooth cleaning modes, polishing or whitening mode, sensitive mode for your sensitive teeth, gum-massaging mode, and more.
Easy to use
Though you may feel uncomfortable when you hear about the technology, an electric toothbrush is so easy to use.
You don’t even have to move your wrist or hand back and forth as you do with normal brushes.
What you need to do is to hold the handle of the toothbrush and direct it to the proper position along with teeth and braces.
An electric toothbrush will do the rest of the work for you. Even, you may feel that the brushing technique is much easier than manual toothbrushing over time.
You can also give it to your kids, as they can perform the brushing technique more effectively with this toothbrush.
Moreover, People who have problems with hands such as having limited or painful hand movements can use an electric toothbrush without facing any trouble.
But, you should check the product guide if that specific product is recommended for kids or those groups of patients.
Learn how to use an electric toothbrush for braces.
Battery-powered or rechargeable varieties
There are two main types of electric toothbrushes available in the market. They have differences on their own. You can follow the proper guides before you get one and always get ADA approved electric brushes.
But, the main thing is you don’t need any special technique or extra cost to keep it active. You can run it on a battery if you get a battery-powered toothbrush.
However, you don’t need to replace the battery if you use rechargeable toothbrushes. You just need to recharge it using the base by connecting the plugs into a wall outlet.
Varieties of the brush head
The electric toothbrush offers you different types of brush heads. You can choose one based on your dental health.
Other Special features
Whether you use a manual or electric toothbrush, you have to replace the brush head after a few months.
You also have to change the brush head of the electric toothbrush. This toothbrush has a built-in feature that will give you a digital reminder when it’s time to change the bristle.
So, it makes this device more user friendly. You don’t need to change the base. Get the bristle from online or a local store and replace it regularly.
However, some products allow you to use multiple brush heads on the same device whether others may require the same type of brush head.
Some brands also provide more useful features like Bluetooth connectivity and tracking technology.
These features help you track the progress of your brushing and improve oral hygiene.
Takeaways
You should get an electric toothbrush while wearing braces since it’s safe to use with braces and removes plaque and food debris more effectively.
However, you have to brush your teeth at least twice a day and floss once a day to get the maximum benefits.
Besides, you should be aware of your food habits with brackets and wires on your teeth.
Always keep in mind that you need an all-out effort to maintain oral hygiene with braces or you may end up having tooth decay, or staining, and gum diseases after the end of orthodontic treatment.
Pallab Kishore is a certified dentist and the owner of Orthodontic Braces Care.
He completed BDS in 2014. Now, he is an MS resident in Orthodontics, BSMMU. He likes content writing and has 12+ years of experience in blogging.
