Metal Mouth Message Board

Two days ago I had braces put in... ceramic upper/lower-excluding metal brackets for the back few teeth. It's somewhat painful to eat anything - chewing particularly hurts. In your experience, when does the initial pain after getting braces subsides? Will eating always be this difficult? I dread eating :( which is kinda a good thing because I could lose a few pounds lol! Any advice is greatly appreciated. Thank you!

Congrats and welcome to the club! It will take a couple of weeks for your cheeks to toughen up a bit, but you should use dental wax liberally. My first reaction was to gob it on, but as it turns out sometimes less is more effective in terms of mass. Most of us had difficulty eating due to tooth pain at first, and at various times when stronger wires were used or some other torture such as elastics and powerchains were added. I recommend the use of ibuprofen, used according to label directions. It really helps take the edge of tooth pain, and to some extent the cheek tenderness. It can make meals a bit more tolerable. It will get better. The first couple of months can be a challenge, but things will settle down a bit over the next several days. Best of luck to you!

[quote="djspeece"]Congrats and welcome to the club! It will take a couple of weeks for your cheeks to toughen up a bit, but you should use dental wax liberally. My first reaction was to gob it on, but as it turns out sometimes less is more effective in terms of mass. Most of us had difficulty eating due to tooth pain at first, and at various times when stronger wires were used or some other torture such as elastics and powerchains were added. I recommend the use of ibuprofen, used according to label directions. It really helps take the edge of tooth pain, and to some extent the cheek tenderness. It can make meals a bit more tolerable. It will get better. The first couple of months can be a challenge, but things will settle down a bit over the next several days. Best of luck to you![/quote]

Thanks for the encouragement! I'm thrilled to finally correct my bite/teeth after many, many years of being embarrassed by my smile :/ Hopefully, after 18 months or so (through bouts of pain every 6-8 weeks when they tighten the wires!), I will no longer shy away from showing my teeth when smiling or laughing. It's well worth any suffering in my opinion. Thanks again. I'm happy to be a member of this great online community.

I took ibuprofen around the clock for nearly a week. Then things were just tender and about 2 weeks in I was good. I still couldn't chew though because I had bumpers on my bottom teeth so my molars wouldn't touch. That was 6 months ago, and I can chew now. I don't eat much crunchy stuff though, teeth just feel too jiggly and spongey for that. But not pain like the very beginning. I ached for a while. Now after an appointment I sometimes take ibuprofen when I get home, sometimes not. Things just feel tight for the rest of the day.

I feel yah,, just had mine put on 5 days ago. The process of putting it didn't hurt at all but a day after that and til yesterday, I literally can't eat anything. Today I was able to have pasta for lunch.. it's still hard to chew but it feels heaven to finally be able to bite using my front teeth without hurting too much.

I didn't have any pain that prevented me from eating. First few days were the most painful but I could eat.

Try clove oil, tastes disgusting but did a cotton bud/q tip in the oil and apply to cheeks. It will remove the pain very fast in my experience.

Ibuprophen worked for me. ACT makes a mouthwash for braces that also helped, and if your teeth get real sensitive to brushing Sensodyne really helps. There are a lot of things that help in the dental isle of your supermarket or drugstore, but after awhile you won't need much. You just get used to it.

It took about 2 weeks for the pain and sores on my gums to go away. Nothing really seemed to help besides cold water. Not to mention, I did not know how to eat AT ALL. I lived off soup and mashed potatoes. It's been a little over a month and I still can't eat "normally" but i see improvement. Don't try to eat things you shouldn't, I already broke a bracket. But day by day, it gets easier.