About Orthodontics
Wearing Your Elastics for a Great Smile Sooner
Elastics or rubber bands work with the wires on your braces to mold and guide your teeth into your great smile. They’re as important as the wires for the success of your braces and your smile. They’re easy to wear and we want you to know about them to get your great smile as quickly and as comfortably as possible.
The braces are the handles on each tooth. The wire and the elastics or rubber bands work together to place gentle pressure to guide your teeth into position. Our braces use gentler wires and we use gentle elastics to match. It feels better for you and the rubber bands are so small that people will hardly notice you’re wearing them.
How Long Should You Wear the Elastics?
Wearing the elastics half of the time doesn’t keep us on track to the finish line. Full-time wear is much more effective, and it feels better for your teeth when the pressure is steadier. Part-time elastic wear may never get us to the result you want. Only full-time wear will give us the success we want in the time we want.
We’ll show you how to wear the elastics and how much. For most elastics, your teeth need you to wear them nearly all the time – day and night. Steady gentle pressure is the best way to move teeth. It’s the most comfortable and the teeth move faster. In fact, in most cases, wearing your elastics only part of the time will simply not move your teeth to where we want.
If an elastic breaks while you’re wearing it, it’s not a problem. You’ll hardly feel the light elastic when it lets go. Just pop in a new elastic. Keep a supply with you to keep your teeth moving. You want to get in the habit of wearing the elastics so that it feels weird when you’re not wearing them. If you need more elastics, just call or text us and we’ll mail more for you.