DHS students express their opinions on braces

Rough grey metal, complete with brackets and wire is glued upon his teeth. The blue bands linking all the brackets together shimmer as junior Ian Fletcher talks about what it’s like to wear braces.

“I hate having braces” Fletcher said.

Sophomore Mikie Schlosser agrees, “They cut my gums. Sometimes I get food stuck in them, they suck.”

Despite the complaints, braces have vastly improved since previous generations. Not only are they cheaper when adjusted for inflation than they used to be, but they are a lot smaller. “They don’t look like they used to with the whole mouth full of metal,” local orthodontist Dr. Robert Kelleher said.

According to Kelleher, the comfort, appearance, efficiency and speed of braces have significantly bettered over the years. “We use state of the art technology. The wires we use came out of a space program which makes them a lot more gentle and quick for patients.”

Even with all the new technology to help ease and accelerate the process of braces, sometimes students deem high school too late to be sporting the shiny grey metal. “Braces were more popular in junior high,” sophomore Kevin Sorensen said.

Sophomore Maia Polis agreed. When Polis found out she was going to get braces on, she was almost excited, before she realized she would have them for high school. “I didn’t want to get them in high school because that’s the time people were getting them off and I was just getting them on and had to look stupid,” she said.

But Kelleher said high school is not too late to be wearing braces. In fact, childhood and adolescence are the perfect times to get them because that’s when the best results are achieved. “I see a lot of adults who never had braces as children and when they get older they either want or need them,” he said.

The problem with getting braces as an adult is that “when you get to be an adult everything is cast in stone. There’s nothing you can do,” Kelleher said. Plus, as an adolescent the teeth are softer and still growing so an orthodontist has the ability to redirect the growth of the teeth, leading to a better outcome. Still, some students choose to not get braces.

“They want to live their life free and without them. If given a magic wand granting the opportunity for better teeth, they’ll take it, but when it comes to wearing braces they’re just not into it,” Kelleher said.

Many students sometimes feel at a certain point their teeth are already straight and ask why it’s necessary to persist with keeping them on. The answer is, not always will teeth that look straight, stay straight. Kelleher says this is because getting the crown of the teeth into better looking shape is much easier than fixing the roots which is critical to the stability of the tooth. Something, Kelleher said, few appreciate.

Other issues teens have with braces are that food gets stuck in them and it is harder to clean their teeth. “I hate how hard it is to floss and not being able to eat certain things because they’ll get stuck,” junior Natasha Gunasekara said.

Although they have their downsides, it’s a misconstrued myth that braces hurt all the time; it’s usually only after they get tightened.

Even though they can be a drag, sophomore Laney Teaford is glad she has braces on now versus later. Kelleher concurs, “If you think you’re ever, ever, ever not going to like your teeth or your bite, get braces out of the way now because it’s faster and easier than doing it as an adult.”