Straighter teeth without the fuss; Invisalign

Did you know you can get straighter teeth with Invisalign Golders Green without ever having to wear a brace of any kind?

When it comes to the thought of adult orthodontics, too many patients worry about the use of a brace; we at The Garden Dental Practice understand that! Orthodontic treatment with Invisalign Golders Green uses thin, transparent plastic aligners that are barely noticeable in face-to-face meetings or online sessions.

Invisalign Golders Green works on the same mechanical principles as traditional braces. By applying constant force to teeth over a long enough time, the teeth will move, adopting new positions. The difference between aligners and braces is that a brace stores the energy of that force in the tension on an archwire and is designed to last for the entire length of the treatment (6 to 12 months). An aligner, on the other hand, stores the force in the elastic tension of the plastic and is only meant to be worn for two weeks. For such a short-duty cycle, aligners do not have to be as robust as braces and can, therefore, be lighter, more comfortable and easier to use.

Treatment pathway

All of our treatments begin with an assessment during which we will discuss medical and aesthetic goals and the suitable treatments that could help you. Once we have decided on a treatment, the next step will involve an x-ray and digital scans. The purpose of the x-ray is to check root health whilst digital scans provide the measurements from which we can create the treatment schedule and a route map of how your tooth position will be altered from its current state to a more aligned and symmetrical one.

Following the scans, your custom aligners will be produced and you can start treatment. We recommend that you wear your aligners regularly and remove them only before eating and drinking. Not wearing the aligners not only prolongs the overall treatment time but risks a minor orthodontic complication referred to as reversion, where your teeth migrate back to their pre-treatment positions, and, as you can imagine, this is not the desired result. Therefore, you must aim to wear the aligners for a minimum of 22 hours a day.

When you first wear your aligners, they may feel very snug, and you will notice pressure being applied to your teeth, but over the next two weeks, this will become less apparent as the aligners loosen, indicating that it is time to move on to the next one in the series. Throughout the treatment, we would advise you to attend regular checkups with us so that we can monitor your progress and catch any issues early on. This is unlike the adjustment carried out when using orthodontic braces since all the alterations of tooth position are pre-packed into the shapes of your progressive series of aligners.

If you want to know more about the Invisalign treatment and how it could help you gain a straighter smile, please contact our team at The Garden Dental Practice, and we will book you in for an appointment.