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Are your teeth less than straight? Is their appearance affecting your smile? You might be suitable for teeth braces, and nowadays, there are several options available, and your choice is no longer limited to metal braces you might remember during childhood.

Why Have Braces?

In an ideal world, after you lose your milk or baby teeth, your adult teeth will come through beautifully aligned and perfectly straight. Unfortunately, the reality can be very different. Teeth can come through crooked because of problems with overcrowding, where there isn’t enough room in your jaws to accommodate all your teeth comfortably. Your jaws might not be quite the right shape or size to give you a perfect bite. Childhood habits like thumb or finger sucking, tongue thrusting or mouth breathing can all affect the development of your teeth and jaws. Losing your baby teeth too soon to an accident or decay can have a similar effect.

Straightening your teeth with braces will improve their alignment and correct bite problems. In addition to improving your smile, braces can also help to protect your oral health as straighter teeth are easier to keep clean, so your risk of tooth decay and gum disease can reduce. They will also wear more evenly, as your teeth will bite together properly.

When to See a Dentist for Braces?

If you have a child, we can closely monitor their teeth and jaws’ growth and development. Sometimes it is useful for a child to see an orthodontist around age seven as they begin to get their permanent teeth. At this age, early orthodontic treatment can help correct problems caused by thumb or finger sucking or tongue thrusting and can help guide the growth of their developing teeth and jaws. It may mean your child needs less or no orthodontist treatment when they get older.

Otherwise, the most common age to see people wearing braces is during their teens, but it’s becoming far more common to see adults wearing them. It’s never too late to have orthodontic treatment provided your teeth are generally strong and healthy.

Different Types of Braces

Traditional metal braces are still widely used, especially for children; they provide predictable results and are cost-effective. However, less visible braces are becoming far more popular. These include ceramic braces that have clear or tooth-coloured brackets fixed onto teeth and lingual braces that fit inside teeth and are nearly invisible. Removable braces consisting of clear plastic aligners are very popular. They can provide excellent results and are easy to use, but they need good compliance.

What Is the Cost of Braces?

The cost can vary considerably depending on the problems requiring correction and your treatment preference. As a rough guide, metal braces cost anywhere from $2000 upwards. Ceramic braces typically cost $5000 upwards. The cost of lingual braces tends to be higher as the brace brackets are made individually to fit inside your mouth. These can cost up to $9000. The cost of removable invisible braces like Invisalign can range from $6000 upwards, but if you only require minor corrections, treatment is shorter, and the costs may start from $4500 upwards.

The best way to get a better estimate is to come and see us and discover more about all the treatment options available.

A decent-quality toothbrush should last around three months, and if the bristles are beginning to look splayed or frayed, it’s time to retire it and replace it with a shiny new toothbrush. However, instead of dumping the toothbrush in the bin, why not give it a new lease of life?

Why Bother to Re-Purpose an Old Toothbrush?

The thought of re-purposing an old toothbrush might seem strange, but it is environmentally friendly. It helps to keep your toothbrush out of the landfill, reducing the amount of wasted plastic. Also, reusing your toothbrush for a different purpose can help reduce your overall carbon footprint.

Getting Your Toothbrush Ready to Be Reused

Before you can reuse your toothbrush, you need to clean it thoroughly, and the best way to do this is to boil it in water for a few minutes or pop it in the dishwasher the next time you run a cycle. Now your brush is ready for use once again.

1. Cleaning Your Bathroom

Your toothbrush is designed to reach right to the back of your mouth, making it perfect for cleaning hard-to-reach areas in your house. It’s great for cleaning the bathroom, especially around the taps and tiles and in all those nooks and crannies.

2. Cleaning Kitchen Appliances

You can use a toothbrush in the kitchen to clean appliances thoroughly. It can also receive a new lease of life for cleaning your computer keyboard.

3. As a Substitute Paintbrush for Creative Projects

A toothbrush makes a great substitute for a paintbrush, especially if you like to do art projects with your kid. The toothbrush bristles can create new and interesting effects that would otherwise be hard to achieve. It’s also a nice way to teach your child about the importance of trying to re-purpose objects rather than throwing them away.

4. As a Beauty Tool

An old toothbrush can be excellent for taming messy brows. It is also a good device to tame frizzy hair and flyaway hairs. Just spray a little hairspray onto the bristles and use the toothbrush to comb those annoying little hairs sticking up, putting them into their proper places, and giving you a smoother and more polished appearance.

Storing Your Re-purposed Toothbrush

When you re-purpose your toothbrush, store it somewhere different from your bathroom. So put it with your art projects or with your cleaning supplies for your bathroom or kitchen to make sure it doesn’t get mixed up with your brand-new toothbrush.

Once you begin to reuse old toothbrushes, you may find all sorts of other ideas about re-purposing them. It can also be a great way to ensure you remember to replace your toothbrush every three months, just in time to use it for a brand-new project you have in mind.

Finally, if you ever want more advice on buying the best toothbrush, please just ask us. Choosing a toothbrush with soft bristles that won’t damage your teeth or gums yet still clean your teeth effectively is important.

If you stand in front of the mirror and open your mouth wide enough to look at your throat, you will see a small piece of tissue that looks a bit like a pendulum hanging right at the back. It is worth taking a look, especially if you haven’t noticed it before, as this little piece of tissue is called a uvula, a Latin word that translates to little grape. The uvula is attached to the soft palate right at the back of your mouth and is made from muscle and flexible connective tissues, ensuring it remains hanging right at the back, just above your tongue. The size and shape of a uvula can vary tremendously, and it comes in many different colours. Generally, a uvula is pink but can also appear red, brown or even purple. What you might not know is that only humans have a uvula. Other animals might have similar structures, but nothing is quite the same.

What Is the Purpose of a Uvula?

There has been a lot of debate about the exact purpose of a uvula, and experts rarely agree upon it. However, it is thought that the uvula helps block the passageway to your nasal cavity whenever you swallow, preventing food from going up your nose! As you swallow, the uvula moves backwards. It is also thought that the uvula helps speech. If you snore or live with someone who snores, then part of this noise is caused by the uvula vibrating. If you have an overactive gag response, you might be able to blame it on your uvula. Touching the uvula can induce vomiting or make you gag, and it could be a safety feature preventing food from going down the wrong way to prevent you from choking.

However, one of the main purposes of a uvula seems to be to produce saliva, helping to moisten your mouth and throat. An adequate flow of saliva is extremely important for oral health as it helps keep your mouth clean, moist and comfortable. As you chew food, it is moistened by saliva so you can form the food into a bolus and swallow it more easily. Saliva contains digestive enzymes, so the process of digestion actually begins in your mouth and ensures your body can extract maximum nutrition from your food more effectively.

Can a Uvula Develop Problems?

Generally, your uvula will just hang at the back of your throat without any problem, but it can sometimes become inflamed or swollen, perhaps because of seasonal allergies. In this case, taking antihistamines can help, or you might find it useful to drink more water or use a humidifier. Other times a uvula becomes swollen because of a bacterial infection, and you might need antibiotics.

Very rarely, a uvula may need to be removed, perhaps if the person has severe sleep apnoea. You can function perfectly well without a uvula, although it may initially take a little time to get used to swallowing or speaking.