Metal Mouth Message Board

Hi. I am 51 and getting my clarity ceramic braces on tomorrow...I'm nervous but excited. The deal is that I'm really into red wine and have a trip planned this summer for a month in Italy (!!!!!) It's my first trip to Europe and I've been planning this long before my dentist said I really need to get braces to correct palate/ jaw issues.

SO...what to do about the ligatures and red wine staining?

I have an idea - maybe putting wax over them before I go to a wine tasting might keep the fronts from staining? Or will I look ridiculous and it won't work anyway? What would be a good color ligature that wouldn't be so obvious but wouldn't stain so quickly?

What about changing my own ligatures while in Italy?

Smoke or gray colored ligs won't stain. Light blue is also an option. However, I have heard from differing sources that depending on bracket types, some ceramic styles CAN alo stain as well. I would take a bottle of water with you and make sure to swig after drinking wine. You also may want to brush if you're able to.

You're probably sitting in the ortho chair right now. If so, good luck!

FP's suggestions on colors are good options if you're worried. However, don't worry about the Clarity brackets - those definitely don't stain. You can also pop into your ortho either right before and/or after the trip to have you ligatures changed. You'll probably enjoy your red wine often between now and your trip, so you'll have a chance to figure out how it impacts and if you're comfortable with trying a light colored lig.

Now, if your trip was to India, you'd be in trouble! fwiw, when I was trying to figure out what to watch out for, I saw some study that ranked the biggest offenders as turmeric, coffee, red wine, black tea, in that order. So red wine isn't even as bad as coffee. Turmeric is immediate and if you forget about it, you'll definitely get a reminder when you find the next mirror. I think everyone here has at least "oh no!" story. Surprisingly, things like cola and tomato-based foods aren't big time offenders. Have fun and go crazy with your Brunello's!

Turmeric is immediate and if you forget about it, you'll definitely get a reminder when you find the next mirror.

Yup, what he said! Don't worry at all about red wine - I live in France where wine is cheaper than water so I drink it lots and I've never had staining. Turmeric however

Also the ceramic brackets themselves don't stain, it's just the ligatures that take on colour and those are changed at every appointment so you won't live with it for long - I usually plan to have a nice curry the night before my appointment! And definitely don't try to change ligatures - I had one pop off and tried to put it back on - it pinged off a tweezers and landed in the toilet. They are fiddly devils.

Enjoy the wine

Thanks everyone. I will plan to have a bit of red before my last appointment prior to leaving for Italy - good idea! I have to go in on Monday to have another bracket put on and I think I might try the gray and the light blue ligatures on a couple of my side teeth to get an idea of what they'd look like.

BTW - I have had coffee a couple of times this week and covered my front teeth with the silicone wax to see if it would prevent staining and it worked great. Doubt I will do this in public though...

My choice remains grey/ smoke ligatures on my ceramic braces. I've only been in them for 7 weeks now but have had no staining issues and that's a major concern for me. On the daily, I drink about 2 cups of coffee and usually have iced tea with dinner. Enjoy your wine!

Thanks Blondecam.I am going to try those. When looking at pictures I can see that once the ligatures are stretched around brackets they don't seem as dark/ bright as they do prior to being put on the teeth...