Dental Braces & How They Work
Dental braces--they’re on for about 1 1/2 to 2 years, they come off, you have a beautiful, straight smile, but, how exactly do they work?
We endure the challenges of having to maintain them,
the pain, the discomfort, the time commitment and of course the financial investment. We feel and see our teeth move especially when we get the braces tightened at our follow up appointments, but how exactly is it done? It’s actually much simpler than you think.Braces consist of a few main parts, also known as ‘hardware’. Let’s see exactly what braces are made of and how they result in straighter teeth:
- Brackets: these are small metal pieces that are attached to your teeth first with some kind of adhesive, also known as a bonding material. This is just a type of glue that keeps the brackets attached to your teeth.
- Arch Wire: this is the thin piece of metal that is placed over the brackets. This part of the braces is what guides your teeth and puts pressure on your teeth, giving them the direction in which to move and become straight.
- O-Rings: o-rings (also known as ligature elastics) are small pieces of rubber that resemble tiny rubber bands. They hold the arch wire in place and go over the arch wire and onto the brackets. These are changed each time your braces are tightened, and you usually get to pick from a wide variety of colors and other options like glitter and glow in the dark effects too.
- Elastics: Elastics are only needed for specific types of treatment, as decided by your orthodontist. Specific cases require elastics, including an overbite or an underbite. Elastics are looped around a top and a bottom bracket and create more pressure to help straighten the teeth and create more tension in a specific direction for your teeth and jaw.
Dental braces will loosen your teeth and move them due to the pressure of the wire and elastics. As this occurs, the membrane surrounding the teeth on one side expands, and constricts on the other, causing your teeth to loosen from the gums. As your teeth are straightened, they will move less causing the bone around the membrane to grow, supporting your teeth in their new place. It is because of this process that braces are required to be worn for 1 1/2 to 2 years, because if your teeth shift too quickly, you can end up losing your pearly whites!Specific courses of treatment require the use of headgear. If this is the case, it is usually worn for an average of 10 to 14 hours each day. What headgear does is it allows certain teeth to remain in their place, allowing only specific teeth to shift.The last and final step--the retainer. The dental braces have officially and finally come off, and now it’s time to prepare your teeth for their final shifting. Since your teeth are still a little loose from the pressure from the braces, the retainer holds the teeth in their new position until the bone around them is strengthened and support them on their own. The retainer is worn either 24 hours a day, or for a certain amount of time each day, as determined by your orthodontist.
