Taking care of your Invisalign is as important as the option to have them. During the course of your treatment, in order to keep your teeth and gums healthy and your Invisalign in St John’s Wood in tip-top condition, you need to apply best practices. These include the keeping and cleaning of both your teeth and the aligners themselves.
Taking care of your teeth
Looking after the health of your gums and teeth is more important than ever if you are having treatment. You should be brushing at least twice daily and using dental floss and interdental brushes. To make sure you are getting the level of clean needed between each tooth, pay particular attention to the gum line, as this is where food debris builds up and leads to plaque and tartar, both of which are leading causes of tooth loss.
It’s highly recommended that you begin to carry a travel toothbrush with you, as you will be needing to remove your Invisalign whenever you eat a meal. It is also vital that whenever it is placed back in, that you are giving your teeth a brush first. If you imagine the aligners as a greenhouse collecting all the germs over your teeth, you can understand why it’s so important.
Taking care of your aligners
When it comes to taking off the trays themselves, it’s really important you’re keeping them clean to protect your teeth and gums from germs, but also to help avoid any build-up of plaque on the surface of the aligners too. Any build-up could cause damage to the aligners resulting in cracks and snapping.
It’s really worth investing in an aligner box, to keep them safe – usually your dentist will give you one when you buy your aligners, but it’s worth getting your own too, as a spare for emergencies.
When it comes to cleaning, there is lots of contradictory information on cleaning aligners. Most practitioners highly recommend investing in Invisalign cleaning crystals or something similar. These products are especially designed to help give back that clear glow to aligners, without any toxins causing harm to the surface of them.
You should be brushing the surface of your aligners daily too, just using a manual soft bristle brush to do so, so as to not cause any damage to the appliance. You can use either a non toxic soap that is colourless or a colourless toothpaste.
Invisalign is an excellent method of tooth straightening, but really relies on the work of the patient to play their part in maintenance and care. If they are neglected the benefit of them being so subtle can easily disappear. Which is why it’s so important that people don’t eat or drink anything other than water whilst they’re wearing them, as it can seriously damage the surface of the aligners and leave staining that can’t be removed. Eating whilst wearing Invisalign can also cause damage to the plastic itself and leave cracks and damage that can’t be fixed. Therefore, it is very important to remove them and keep a travel box with you.