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Valentine’s Day is on the way, and sweet treats are a Cupid-approved Valentine’s tradition. Make your day even sweeter by showing your smile some love while enjoying your favorites.

Choose Healthy and Braces-Friendly Desserts

When it comes to desserts which are good for you and your braces, some are love at first bite:

• The Charms of Chocolate

If you’re head over heels for chocolate, good news! Soft chocolate candies and truffles and moist chocolate cakes and cupcakes are a safe (and tasty) choice.

For a richer chocolate experience, consider dark chocolate. Dark chocolate is often called a “superfood” because it’s packed with nutrients and antioxidants. Dark chocolate also contains less sugar than milk or white chocolate, so it’s the perfect dental choice for chocoholics.

• Dairy Delights

Dairy foods might be your perfect match when it comes to maintaining healthy teeth and gums. The calcium and phosphorus minerals in milk, yogurt, cream, and other dairy products help strengthen and restore tooth enamel. The vitamin D in dairy foods helps our bodies absorb these minerals and put them to work. Vitamin D also plays a role in preventing gum disease.

Creamy puddings, parfaits, ice creams, and gelatos—without chewy or crunchy additions—are easy on your braces. For even healthier options, try yogurt-based desserts. Yogurt has less sugar than its creamy cousins as well as probiotics for better gum and oral health.

• Fancy Fruits

Perhaps fruits are the apple of your eye. After all, fruits are a wonderful source of vitamins, minerals, fiber, and antioxidants. Flavorful smoothies, juicy fruit kabobs, and rich sorbets might be less traditional Valentine’s choices, but are no less delicious! When made with pureed fruits, soft fruits, and thin-sliced fruits, they’re braces-friendly as well.

Since a little decadence is expected on Valentine’s Day, why not treat yourself to strawberries dipped in chocolate? Besides the vitamins and minerals which strawberries offer, they also contain malic acid, which can act as a natural tooth-whitener.

Avoid Treats on the Naughty List

Okay, Cupid doesn’t have a naughty list. But if he did, these foods would definitely be on it because of the damage they can cause to your teeth and braces.

• Hard and Crunchy Confections

Hard candies, peanut brittle, lollipops, nutty candy bars—if it’s hard to bite into, it’s hard on your braces, and can damage brackets and wires.

• Chewy Candy

Caramels, taffy, licorice and other super-chewy rolls and candies can break brackets and bend wires. And they’re difficult for Dr. Elizabeth Hite, DMD, MS to remove from the surface of teeth and braces.

• Sticky Sweets

Soft and sticky candies like gumdrops, jellybeans, and other gummy treats stick to your brackets and wires, making it hard to clean sugary remnants from your teeth and potentially damaging to your braces.

• Sour Candy

Sour candies and sour gummy anythings aren’t good for your teeth. Highly acidic foods erode the mineral strength of your tooth enamel, and this can lead to tooth sensitivity and tooth decay.

Treat Yourself Well—But Not Too Often!

While it’s tempting to enjoy Valentine’s treats all day long, do your enamel a favor and snack moderately. Eating frequently throughout the day, or “grazing,” defeats one of your body’s amazing natural methods of cavity prevention.

It’s not just people who enjoy sugar—oral bacteria love sugar, too. Sugar fuels the bacteria which are responsible for cavities. Bacteria in plaque use sugar to create acids which, like acidic foods, cause enamel erosion and decay.

Part of the body’s natural cavity-fighting mechanism is saliva. Saliva washes away food particles and bacteria, provides minerals to reinforce enamel strength, and helps neutralize acids.

But it takes about 30 minutes for saliva’s neutralizing process to begin. Constant snacking delays acid neutralization and reduces its period of effectiveness. Limit your snacks and avoid grazing to help your body’s natural defenses work their best for you.

Give Your Smile Some Extra TLC

We all enjoy a special dessert on a special occasion–and Valentine’s Day certainly qualifies! Just remember to take special care with your dental hygiene after enjoying sugary treats.

• Brush and Floss

Be sure to brush and floss as often as the team at Bauer Hite Orthodontic Specialists recommends. It’s a good idea to give your teeth an extra brushing after an especially sugary confection to remove food particles from brackets and wires.

• Drink Water

Water not only hydrates, it encourages saliva production. And, if you can’t brush right away, rinsing with water helps remove food particles from your teeth and braces.

Valentine’s Day is a day celebrated with all kinds of sweet things, and one of the sweetest is your healthy smile. Make this Valentine’s Day in Edwardsville special by showing your smile the love it deserves!

Most parents know that routine dental care should begin during their child’s toddler years. And many assume they must wait until their child has all of his or her permanent teeth to visit Dr. Elizabeth Hite, DMD, MS for an initial orthodontic consultation.

The ideal age for an orthodontic evaluation is age seven. At that age, your child will have a mixture of adult and baby teeth for Dr. Elizabeth Hite, DMD, MS and our team at Bauer Hite Orthodontic Specialists to make a determination about whether any problems are present. Typically the first molars have come in by the time your child turns seven, giving us an opportunity to check for malocclusion, also known as “bad bite.” Also, by the time your child reaches the age of seven, the incisors have begun to come in, and problems such as crowding, deep bites, and open bites can be detected.

When Dr. Elizabeth Hite, DMD, MS and our team perform an evaluation on your child at an early age, you get one of two positive outcomes. Although treatment usually will not begin until one to five years after the initial evaluation, it’s still helpful in determining whether your child has any problems with the jaw and teeth early when they are still easy to treat. Earlier treatment can also cost less to correct a potential problem than delayed treatment.

Early evaluation, of course, may signal a need for early treatment. For some children, early treatment can prevent physical and emotional trauma. Aside from spurring years of harmful teasing, misaligned teeth are also prone to injury and are detrimental to good oral hygiene.

If your child is approaching age seven, or has already surpassed his or her seventh birthday, it is time to schedule an appointment for an initial examination at Bauer Hite Orthodontic Specialists.

You’ve been told that you have a malocclusion called an “underbite.” Let’s look at just what this diagnosis means, and what it means for you.

Just what is an “underbite”?

A malocclusion is another way of saying that you have a problem with your bite, which is the way your jaws and teeth fit together when you bite down. In a typical bite, the front top teeth project slightly beyond, and slightly overlap, the bottom teeth.

An underbite, on the other hand, results when the lower teeth and jaw extend further forward than the upper teeth and jaw, causing the bottom teeth to overlap the top teeth.

What causes an underbite?

Underbites tend to be genetic, and run in families, so, most often, an underbite is something you’re born with. The size of your jaws, the shape of your teeth, or both will affect your bite.

A smaller number of underbites develop because of injuries or early oral habits, such as prolonged and vigorous thumb sucking or tongue thrusting.

How do we treat an underbite?

Your treatment will depend on the type and severity of your underbite, and your age when treatment occurs.

• Braces and Aligners

If your underbite is a slight one, caused, for example, by crowded or overly large teeth, braces or clear aligners can help move the teeth into proper alignment.

• Functional Appliances

If the underbite is caused by a problem with upper and lower jaw development, devices called functional appliances can be used to help guide the growth of the jawbones while a child’s bones are still growing and forming.

If you’re a young patient, two appliances commonly used to help correct an underbite are palatal expanders, which gradually widen the upper jaw if it’s too narrow, and reverse pull headgear, which fits both inside the mouth and outside on the face, and provides a steady, gentle pull to encourage the forward growth of the upper jaw.

• Surgical treatment

In some severe cases, surgical treatment can correct an underbite by reshaping the jawbone itself and positioning it further back to align properly with the upper jaw.

Why treat your underbite?

A serious underbite can cause damaged teeth and enamel, painful problems with the temporomandibular joint, headaches and facial pain, sleep apnea, difficulty chewing, eating, and speaking, and can affect confidence and self-esteem.

By following your treatment plan, you’ll not only prevent these consequences, but you’ll achieve major benefits—a healthy, comfortable bite, and an attractive, confident smile. Want to know more? Talk it over with Dr. Elizabeth Hite, DMD, MS at our Edwardsville office for all the information you’ll need!

If you’re wearing braces, then you know they are working hard to straighten your teeth. However, those hard-working braces are also preventing you from easily cleaning your teeth. It is essential that you put some extra attention into preventing tooth decay while wearing your braces. When your braces are finally removed by Dr. Elizabeth Hite, DMD, MS, you want a beautiful, white smile, not decayed or stained teeth. Here, we’ve listed the five best ways to ensure you have the smile you’ve always dreamed of once your braces are gone.

Use a Special Toothbrush

A regular toothbrush just doesn’t cut it when you are wearing braces. You also need to use an interdental toothbrush so that you can effectively clean behind the braces. This type of brush has bristles that are shaped like a Christmas tree that can remove food residue in the braces and on the teeth. We also recommend using a WaterPik, with its highly pressurized pulsating water, to help get all of those hard-to-reach places.

Brush after Every Meal

Since braces block food from naturally escaping your teeth after eating, it’s important that you take the time to brush and floss after every meal. The less time food has to sit on your teeth, the less likely it is to cause decay. This may seem like an inconvenience, but trust us, when you get your braces off, you will be very glad you brushed after every meal.

Don't Forget the Mouth Rinse

Even after properly brushing and flossing, there are probably some food particles in your braces. A fluoride mouth rinse is the best way to ensure that every bit of food is removed after meals. If you do not have a mouth rinse available, we suggest using water — it’s better than nothing.

Avoid Sweets

Prevention is definitely the best medicine when it comes to avoiding tooth decay. If you can nix decay-causing sugary foods from the outset, we promise you’ll spend less time trying to treat problems in the future.

Get Regular Checkups

Visit your dentist regularly while you are wearing braces. Our office recommends a thorough cleaning every three to six months. Let our Edwardsville office know if you have questions about your oral health while in braces - our entire team at Bauer Hite Orthodontic Specialists is here to make sure your teeth are as beautifully straight as they are healthy!