According to Humana, approximately 4 million children, young adults and adults are using braces to achieve a beautiful smile in the United States. Whether you've only had to wear braces for a short time or have been caring for your braces for years, getting the word from your orthodontist that it is time to remove the metal from your mouth is a great feeling. You're ecstatic that this experience is over but aren't sure what happens next.

As you age, your body naturally becomes a little weaker, and your skin slowly sags. It's just part of life. However, when you smoke, you accelerate the aging process, making yourself look and feel older than you actually are. If you are a smoker, put down that cigarette and take a look at these five ways smoking makes you older before your time. Smoking Causes Wrinkles One way smoking makes you look older is that it ages your skin, and it does this in several ways.

If you've recently been diagnosed with basal or squamous cell carcinoma, you may be terrified after having heard the words "skin cancer" leave your doctor's mouth. Fortunately, both these types of skin cancer have extremely high cure rates—only about 2,000 of the more than 2.2 million people diagnosed with one of these skin cancers each year will succumb to it, and many of these deaths are due to outside complicating factors (like old age or other illness).

As your loved one is being prepared to be discharged from a hospital or rehabilitation center, the doctor may explain to you that your loved one needs at-home healthcare. Typically a nurse will stop by your loved one's home and give him the care he needs, including medications, checking his wounds, and providing physical therapy. However, in addition to this, the doctor may recommend a supportive in-home caregiver. When this occurs, you may wonder how an in-home caregiver differs from at-home healthcare.

If you have watery, irritated eyes, you may think that you have allergies or an eye infection. However, when you visit a doctor, they may inform you that what you are experiencing is actually a blocked tear duct. Unfortunately, this is not something most people are familiar with, which can leave you with many questions. Here are a few of the questions that you may ask if a doctor tells you that you have a blocked tear duct.

Many types of arthritis can cause degeneration of the knees. However, when both knees are significantly affected, this can complicate your options for a knee replacement. There are options to have both knees replaced simultaneously or improve pain and functionality in one knee, while having the other knee replaced. Simultaneous Replacement If you were relatively active before you started experiencing significant problems with both knees and have good upper-body strength and endurance, you may want to ask your doctor if there is the option to have both knees replaced simultaneously.

Are you the parent of a teenager? If so and you haven't had a talk about HIV testing with them, now is the time. Research shows that 46 percent of all high school-aged adolescents are sexually active and in 2013 alone, 406 kids between the ages of 13 and 19 were newly-diagnosed with HIV in the United States. Even if you only have a few minutes you can spend with your teen tonight, sit them down and let them know the below four things.

If you have tinnitus, then this is likely a symptom of a much bigger issue. Specifically, the ringing that you hear is a sign that you have a serious hearing loss problem. Tinnitus occurs as the brain no longer receives sound information as strongly as it once did from the ears. To make up for the lack of stimuli or information, the brain makes up sounds in response. These sounds are typically the ringing noises that you hear in your ears.

If you've just been diagnosed with chronic Lyme disease, it may be frustrating to discover that you have new symptoms each day on top of your fatigue and flu-like symptoms. One surprising—and unfortunate—side effect that you may experience from Lyme is acne.  Killing Two Birds with One Stone Since you will most likely be starting an intense regimen of antibiotics for the Lyme disease, adding some more medicine to the roster may not be what you had in mind.

In 2012 it was reported that about 1.25 million adults and children in the United States have type 1 diabetes. As a type 1 diabetic, your pancreas no longer produces insulin, so you rely on insulin injections and frequent testing of your blood sugar to regulate the disease. Because your blood sugar level can also be affected by stress, illness, exercise, and the food you eat, it can be hard to keep it in a healthy range.