Relatively new types of dental braces, such as lingual, clear aligners, and ceramic braces seem to overshadow traditional braces. However, if you know how to take care of traditional metal braces, they can give you clear advantages over the contemporary types of braces. Below are some of the benefits of traditional metal braces and how you can care for them.

Why Metal Braces Are Great

Metal braces offer many advantages, from subtle to obvious.

Strong and Durable

Each of your teeth are coated in a fine layer of dental enamel, giving teeth their characteristic shiny, white appearance. Composed of hydroxyapatite, dental enamel is the hardest biological material that exists, ranking higher than steel on the Mohs hardness scale.

Unfortunately, that doesn’t mean that dental enamel is impervious to damage, and when it erodes away, it can allow darker, yellow dentin to shine through, making your smile look older. Here are three easy ways to prevent enamel erosion.  

Cracked tooth syndrome occurs when one or more of your teeth have small cracks, which don’t typically show up on X-rays. There are many causes, including grinding your teeth or having large fillings. Whatever the cause, cracked tooth syndrome can cause sensitivity and discomfort. If left untreated, it may also increase the risk of decay, further damage or an infection. If you believe you have cracked tooth syndrome, check out these treatment options to consider.

Composite Bonding

Composite bonding can be used in different ways to help treat cracked tooth syndrome. For starters, if you have metal fillings, your dentist may choose to replace them with tooth-colored fillings, which use composite resin. This is because the metal fillings may be causing your cracked tooth syndrome by causing further cracks to appear in the healthy tooth tissue, but composite fillings are gentle on teeth.

Individuals who want to be models must keep their appearance as flawless as possible. Unfortunately, a car crash could cause dental health problems that negatively affect a promising model’s smile. This situation must be addressed with a smile makeover or the model’s career may be over before it begins.

When Do Car Crashes Cause Severe Dental Trauma?

Car crashes can cause a variety of injury types. One injury type that rarely gets mentioned is dental problems. For example, a model in a car crash may hit their face on the steering wheel or airbag and severely chip or damage one or more teeth.

Unfortunately, dental damage of this type tends to open up the mouth to other problems. For example, a tooth chipped on a steering wheel is more susceptible to plaque and bacteria and may decay more quickly. Sadly, these issues may cause a premature end to a promising model’s career. 

A common treatment for teeth in trouble is to pull them out, or extract them. While dentists and oral surgeons do what they can to save those teeth first, extraction is often left as the only option given the circumstances. As dental technology has improved over the years, the reasons behind tooth extractions have changed.

If you have a tooth that needs help beyond what a filling or bonding can do, don’t assume that you’ll have to have the tooth removed. Your dentist needs to look at a host of surrounding circumstances to determine if another option would work. If your dentist does recommend tooth extraction, knowing what could necessitate extraction will help you understand why your dentist has decided this is the only solution.