What will happen if you smoke with braces?

Dental braces provide a reliable and flexible solution to straighten your teeth. Even though the corrective teeth straightening treatment with braces have high success rates, various factors influence the effectiveness of the braces. The most harmful of them all is smoking.

Everyone is aware of smoking’s damaging effects on our oral cavity. Teeth discoloration, gum recession, and bad breath are some instances provoked by smoking. If you had come across articles on post-care instructions following a dental procedure, you would have read “Stop smoking” in them. Right?

It is because smoking has various adverse effects on oral treatments. Keep reading to know how this habit can mess up your teeth straightening activities.

How does smoking affect teeth straightening?

When the chemical compounds in tobacco products gets into direct contact with your oral cavity while smoking, they narrow the blood vessels of periodontal ligaments. It means blood flow to the gum tissues is reduced due to smoking.

Wearing braces with such compromised oral tissues do not work as good as they work with healthy tissues. Moreover, brace wearers have encountered various complications due to smoking. Here are some instances:

1) Elongates the treatment duration

You should provide a solid framework for orthodontic treatments. It means you have to keep your teeth and gums healthy. Otherwise, the braces do not move the teeth as planned. In such cases, orthodontists have to remove the braces and repair the infected teeth and gums.

As discussed earlier, smoking tobacco products badly impact the teeth, gums, jaw bone, and other oral tissues. The extension of dental tissue damages and treatments to fix them depends on how often a person smokes.

To put it simply, certain dental procedures need to be completed before receiving braces for smokers. It extends the teeth straightening duration so that you have to spend more than they planned.

2) Teeth stains

Nicotine in tobacco products like cigarettes is more likely to stain your teeth. Smokers’ teeth are stained as a consequence of this.

When you smoke while wearing braces, the discolorations deposit on the teeth surfaces around the brackets. If this occurs frequently, you will have stubborn dental stains after the braces are removed. It pushes you to get extensive teeth whitening treatments.

If you wear clear braces, lingering residues lodge in the trays and darken the appliance.

3) Weaken the orthodontic components

Aside from damaging the oral structures, smoking has a direct impact on the teeth straightening appliance. The chemicals in tobacco products are powerful to loosen the bonding agents with which the brackets adhere to the teeth.

We have seen people who smoke frequently while having braces in their mouths encounter the loosening of brackets soon.

4) Slow healing

In certain circumstances, dentists remove one or a few teeth for orthodontic treatments. If you smoke following dental extractions, the blood clots formed in the extraction site collapse, followed by developing dry sockets. It exposes the underlying bone, nerves, and tissues.

Due to this, healing is delayed and you have to wait to wear braces until the region heals completely.

Bottom line

Whether it is a cigarette or vaping or chewing tobacco, they have a mixture of tobacco products with chemicals, carcinogens, heavy metals, and voltaic organic compounds. They can intervene in your teeth straightening activities if you smoke often while wearing braces.

Keep in mind that your teeth and oral tissues should be devoid of bacterial infections to move and align the teeth into the correct positions properly. However, smoking increases the risk of microbial invasions directly.

Hence you should stay away from smoking throughout your orthodontic journey for braces to take effect.