Keeping your braces to yourself
There are some things we want everyone to know about. Great achievements, such as passing your driving test, need to be celebrated far and wide. Most of us don’t like to go on about having driving lessons, in case we get a barrage of well-meaning advice that we really don’t need. It’s the same with getting teeth straightened. People look forward to celebrating when the braces come off, but while they are on, they want to keep their treatment to themselves.
Cue invisible braces, surely one of dentistry’s most popular research developments over the past couple of decades. Here at The Old Windsor Dental Practice in Berkshire, we have a couple of ways to get teeth straightened.
Clear aligners
Imagine if you could put cling film over your teeth and make it fit perfectly. No one would ever know that you have something over your teeth. It’s like that with Invisalign clear aligners. They look like mouth guards, but the rigid, transparent plastic is ultra-thin, only 0.3mm. It hugs your teeth, and around the top of each aligner it also hugs your gumline.
Once your aligners are in place, no one can see them, except maybe your mum or your partner. Otherwise, you can sail through your day, conducting important business meetings with an air of authority, going to parties, and on hot dates, and none of the people you are with will be any the wiser that you are getting your teeth straightened.
It takes a year, on average, for these invisible braces to do their job. They don’t work on every issue though, which is why we also have…
Lingual braces
Lingual braces are bracket and wire braces, which are better for complex or severe alignment issues. What makes these braces invisible is the fact that they are attached to the side of the teeth nearest the tongue, hence the name. Made by Incognito, the brackets are custom-made for each tooth and because treatments are often more complex, they can take a couple of years to complete.
If you’d like to find out more about invisible braces, why not come in for a consultation?
