Your First Winter in Braces? Tips for a Warm and Wonderful Holiday

If this is your first winter with braces, you might be wondering how to make the best of the holiday season. Christopher Cosse and our team have some suggestions for happy and healthy holiday smiles.

Treat Yourself

Winter means tasty holiday treats, and just because you wear braces doesn’t mean you need to step away from the holiday table! You can enjoy your favorites if you remember to check your list for the usual problem foods. Hard, crunchy, chewy, and sticky items? Naughty list.

  • Crunchy vegetables on the appetizer plate
  • Nuts
  • Hard rolls
  • Candy canes and other hard sugar treats
  • Caramels, Toffee and other sticky candies
  • Pecan pie
  • Fruit cake

Luckily, there are plenty of nice alternatives.

  • Turkey and ham—remember, small pieces are best
  • Dressing and stuffing
  • Mashed potatoes
  • Soft breads and rolls
  • Pumpkin pie—but skip a tough crust!
  • Cheesecake
  • Soft cookies and cakes
  • Soft chocolates

We’re happy to provide recommendations for braces-friendly holiday foods. And we don’t expect you to turn down every sweet treat this season.  Just be sure that if you enjoy something sugary, brush carefully after indulging.

Express Yourself

While you’re decking the halls, or pinning up the New Year’s balloons and streamers, or even choosing a great holiday outfit, don’t forget that your ligatures can be decorative as well as functional.

  • Celebrating Christmas? Red and green bands around your brackets are jolly and traditional.
  • How about Hanukkah? Try blue and white!
  • Love the season? Icy silvers and pale blues are a frosty statement—and can have the benefit of making your teeth look whiter, as well. Snowy white? The arctic idea is great, but white bands can sometimes make teeth look more yellow, or become stained themselves.
  • Glam New Year? Gold adds sparkle to your smile, but can bring out any yellow tones in your teeth. Silver might be the perfect choice, because it is generally neutral with enamel shades.

Check out our ligature colors for the best possible choices for your teeth and coloring. Take advantage of these options to create a fresh, confident look for the season. Give others the gift of your smile!

Look After Yourself

Winter comes with some special reminders about your dental health.

  • Winter sports are a great way to celebrate the snow and ice, but be sure to protect your teeth and braces. If you enjoy skiing, snowboarding, ice skating, hockey, or any other winter activities, talk to us about why a mouth guard is so important.
  • While you enjoy your winter break, don’t forget to keep up with your dental routine. And because ‘tis the season for holiday treats, be especially careful to clean your teeth and braces after sweet desserts and snacks. Don’t forget to floss!
  • What do cold breezes and hot chocolate have in common? They can both trigger tooth sensitivity! While some sensitivity is normal after an adjustment, if you find you are experiencing tooth sensitivity more often or more strongly than you usually do, give us a call. It might be something as simple as brushing habits, or you might need to see your dentist.

If you have any questions about your braces, in this season or any other, just ask when you visit our Shreveport, Louisiana office. Your beautiful, healthy, and confident smile can make this the most wonderful time of the year!

Thanksgiving Trivia

At Cosse & Silmon Orthodontics we love learning trivia and interesting facts about Thanksgiving! This year, Christopher Cosse wanted to share some trivia that might help you feel a bit smarter at the holiday dinner table and help create some great conversation with friends and family.

The Turkey

There is no historical evidence that turkey was eaten at the first Thanksgiving dinner. It was a three-day party shared by the Wamponoag Indians and the pilgrims in 1621. Historians say they likely ate venison and seafood.

According to National Geographic, the dinner at the Plymouth colony was in October and included about 50 English colonists and 90 American Indian men. The first Thanksgiving dinner could have included corn, geese, and pumpkin.

Today, turkey is the meat of choice. According to the National Turkey Association, about 690 million pounds of turkey are consumed during Thanksgiving, or about 46 million turkeys.

The Side Dishes

The green bean casserole became popular about 50 years ago. Created by the Campbell Soup Company, it remains a popular side dish. According to Campbell’s, it was developed when the company was creating an annual holiday cookbook. The company now sells about $20 million worth of cream of mushroom soup each year, which is a major part of the recipe.

While there were likely plenty of cranberries for the pilgrims and Indians to enjoy, sugar was a luxury. What we know today as cranberry sauce was not around in those early Thanksgiving days. About 750 million pounds of cranberries are produced each year in the US, with about 30 percent consumed on Thanksgiving.

The Parade

Since Thanksgiving did not become a national holiday until Lincoln declared it in 1863, the annual parades were not yearly events until much later. The biggest parade that continues to draw crowds is the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade. Beginning in 1924 with about 400 employees, they marched from Convent Avenue to 145th Street in New York City. Famous for the huge hot-air balloons today, it was actually live animals borrowed from the Central Park Zoo that were the stars of the show then.

However you choose to spend your Thanksgiving holiday, we wish you a safe, happy and healthy holiday with those you love.

Happy November!

The start of the holiday season means a time of reflection on what we are grateful for in our lives. With the business and urgency of life, it’s nice to stop and reflect on what’s most important. For Dr. Cosse of Cosse & Silmon Orthodontics, he’s most grateful for his wonderful team at the office and his family and friends at home and around his community.

Taking a moment to focus on the positive is always crucial in a year where there were so many challenges and uncertainty. For Dr. Cosse, the office is officially impression free. Athan (my oldest) scored his first collegiate goal for the University of South Carolina. We have been chosen as a test site for a new super bracket (braces)!

For the office of Cosse & Silmon Orthodontics, the most challenging part of the year was definitely the shutdown due to the pandemic. There was a moment when we weren’t sure how we were going to keep our staff paid or if we were ever going to open our doors. Thankfully, our amazing team and a virtual consult software we developed in-house called OrthoScreening™ kept us in contact with our patients and is now being used worldwide and we are incredibly proud of this accomplishment!

Through this year, The CSO team has been truly incredible. They have been understanding when we didn’t have all of the answers and gracious when we thought we did but were wrong. When we finally started seeing patients again we had to double or triple time it to catch up. Dr. Cosse is so appreciative of the whole team! The office couldn’t run smoothly without each and every one of you.

In other office news, we always have specials going on in our office! Including deals for military service members, our first responders, teachers, and medical professionals. Today is always the best day to start your smile transformation and with mask mandates in place it makes straightening your teeth even more discrete. Our CSO Clear product is an amazing Aligners product that is more cost-effective than most corporate products. Call our office to learn more about our services.

We hope everyone has a safe and wonderful Thanksgiving. Can’t wait to see you in our office again soon!

Thanks to Clear Aligners, you can have a perfect smile without metal wires or brackets!

When it comes to straightening your smile, our team at Cosse & Silmon Orthodontics knows that having a mouth full of metal braces may not be your idea of fun. Luckily for you, Christopher Cosse can offer a cosmetic alternative: Clear Aligners!

Using a series of clear, comfortable, and completely customized aligners, you can get the smile you’ve always wanted without traditional braces.

Since Clear Aligners are discreet, they’re hardly noticeable when you speak and smile, and because they’re removable, you can eat and drink whatever you want. Just remember to brush and floss before putting your aligners back in! Treatment with Clear Aligners is just as effective as with metal braces, and the results are just as amazing!

If you want to know more about Clear Aligners, contact our Shreveport, Louisiana office to schedule an appointment.