Brace yourself.
A new trend on TikTok is showing people ways to remove their braces at home with a spoon — and orthodontists are not happy about it.
Minnesota doc Grant Collins, known as @thebracesguy on TikTok where he boasts a following of 4.7 million people, responded to the viral video of a young woman removing her own braces.
In the stitched video, which garnered 2.2 million likes, the user is seen popping off the purple-colored brackets by using the front of a metal spoon.
At the end, she smiles in delight as she uncovers her straight, white teeth.
However, Collins said removing braces is definitely not something to DIY in your spare time.
“If you do take off your own braces, you’re still going to have glue on your teeth, which needs to be removed by a dental drill, not to mention your teeth are gonna shift without a retainer,” Collins explained in his response.
Collins went on to remind metal-mouths that if your teeth shift without a retainer, you might have to go back to braces and start the whole dental process all over again.
But some commenters on the video seemed to push back against the orthodontist’s warning, citing the expensive price of getting braces and going to the dentist.
“You didn’t mention that you have to pay a lot of money to fix all that,” wrote one TikTok user in the comments section.
Another agreed, writing, “Bro’s just scared he’s boutta lose his customers.”
One viewer even chimed in with another creative way to take off the metal contraptions, claiming, “I took my braces off with a hair pin.”
Experts warn that only “qualified” orthodontists have the knowledge and tools to remove braces safely. However, the cost of orthodontic work may be prohibitive for some, especially those without dental insurance. In a 2015 report by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), it revealed that nearly three out of 10 US residents do not have dental insurance.
This is not the first TikTok trend that has seen brace-faces putting their dental health at risk. In July 2022, user @keegotlevi documented the process doing the removal herself, by using a drill and an “orthodontic bracelet removing” plier that she found on Amazon. In December, she followed up with a more in-depth explanation about how she did it and the products that she used.
“I ordered it and it came in two days, it cost like, $12,” she said in her shocking instructional video. “I ordered it because I wanted to remove my braces off my teeth because during the pandemic I had braces and when I went back to the dentist, they wanted to start my time over.”
Lately, dental fiends have taken it upon themselves to shape their own teeth with nail files for an even smile, and even installed their own veneers, too the horror of cosmetic dentists everywhere.
Hoping to skip braces altogether, other gap-toothed teens have acquired dental filler, a material used to fill cavities, to close the spaces between their pearly whites.
“You need to know specifics before you can do stuff like this,” said orthodontist Benjamin Winters, known as “The Bentist” online, in a recent reaction video to the trend on Instagram. “You can’t do this by yourself.”