Seeing that I am now 43, and have braces for the second time around, I can tell you that things have improved!
When I was kid back in the 1970′s, the orthodontist installed bands around my teeth. The bands were kind of rammed onto the teeth. And then the wire was attached to the bands. They were painful, annoying and very ugly! Talk about metal mouth!
Today, braces are much more subtle looking, and a lot easier to have installed in your mouth! And they are a lot less painful, and ugly to wear!
The process begins with something being put in your mouth to hold it open. They rinse your teeth off with a water sprayer, and the dry them with blown air. Then using a swab, they wipe some liquid on the fronts of your teeth. The stuff is kind of foul smelling, but fortunetly you don’t have to smell it long. Then using a small tweezer type tool, they place the backets on your teeth roughly where they need to go. This stuff was all done by an assistant type person. The orthodontist then comes over, adjusts the position of the brackets on the teeth. Then they lightly scrape off the excess glue stuff. It’s still soft at this point. Once the brackets are all positioned correctly, and the excess glue removed, they expose your teeth to a strong UV light, the activate the glue. This doesn’t take long. Maybe 10 seconds per tooth. Then they have you rinse out. You taste the glue stuff, but it quickly rinse out of your mouth. You will feel the brackets on your teeth and the feel funny!
Now they insert a curved wire into slots in each of the brackets. They will place tiny rubber bands over the brackets to hold the wire in the slot. Have them place the the little rubber bands on the brackets is the least comfortable part as they are pressing on your teeth. But this takes one a minute or two. Then they trim the excess bit of wire in the back of your mouth, and you are done. Congratulations on your new braces!

Posted by Rob in Whatever on May 7th, 2007 | No Comments