Drinking Straws Rather Than Wax

[ejs]

Hi all -

I've been lurking here for a few months. I only got braced the first week in October, and just got back from my first adjustment today. While I was in for my adjustment, I shared something with my tech and she thought it was inventive, so I thought I'd mention it to the board in case someone else might find it useful...

When I first had my braces placed (uppers only), I was chewing on a regular drinking straw to try to keep the soreness down. My brackets started to irritate the inside of my cheeks a little bit and I found myself instinctively positioning the straw to rest between my gum line and my cheeks when I wasn't actively chewing on it. The straw became a "bumper", which kept my cheeks from rubbing against my brackets. As time went by, I no longer felt the need to chew on the straw at all (I am one of the lucky ones who hasn't had a lot of soreness) but I still wanted a "bumper" between my cheeks and the brackets. I found that I could cut a small section off a regular drinking straw and tuck it up between my cheek and bracket and it worked very well. I actually ended up not ever using any orthodontic wax. The straw trick worked great for me - no messing with wax, and when I wanted to eat something or brush my teeth I just spit out the piece of straw.

A few disclaimers: One could accidentally swallow or even potentially choke on the straw, so please be careful. I don't have to do a lot of talking for work, so I'm not sure how well this would work if one needed to do a great deal of talking. Also, I only had a few small areas of irritation, so this might not work well if you are having widespread irritation.

Hope this is helpful to a few folks.

ejs

Initial Consult in August - Class II Div II
Ceramic uppers placed 10/04/2013, lowers to follow ????
Sentenced to 24 months

[kristianpaige]

Great idea! Especially the warning about swallowing the straws! Im a bit clumsy!

[Dana6]

Thanks for the idea! Hoping to get braces next month and I've been dreading getting the inside of my mouth torn up. Will definitely try this

[ejs]

Sorry guys - I lost track of this thread. I hope it helps you as much as it did me. One more tip: I found that I needed to cut the straw into very small sections. When I tried to use larger pieces I got irritation from the end of the straw rubbing against the inside of my cheek. Kind of hard to explain, but, basically, a longer section of of straw causes the cheeks to rub against the straw end because the straw is straight while cheeks naturally curve around your jaw arch.

Hope your journeys are going well! Dana6, have you been braced yet?

EJS

Initial Consult in August - Class II Div II
Ceramic uppers placed 10/04/2013, lowers to follow ????
Sentenced to 24 months

[Bracedbeauty22]

Awesome tip. I'm going to try this out today!