The holiday season is obviously one of giving and being thankful, but it also signals another great modern tradition: eating!

However, if you have braces, or any other orthodontic appliances in your mouth, your eating habits during the holidays may need to be modified or changed to ensure you maintain a good level of oral health.

This is what our team at Rollins & Petersen recommends you do to keep your braces healthy while still enjoying holiday food.

Avoid the sticky food

Cranberry sauces may be one of your favorite Thanksgiving Day foods, but if you have braces on this year, you’ll have to skip that and other sticky foods. Cleaning your braces after a Thanksgiving-sized helping of anything sticky will take a long time. And you’d rather be napping or watching football than cleaning your teeth after Thanksgiving Dinner, right?

Floss more

With how much more food you eat this time of year, it also makes sense to floss more after the big meals. You can use your regular flossing technique with which you’re most comfortable, or you can supplement that with a water flosser. This will help get a lot of the bigger chunks of food unstuck from between your braces so all you have to do is floss to remove plaque.